Verve ole Buddy,
<< This article expresses one of my top two fears for Q -- the delayed adoption of 3G. >>
Pick up thy chin, mate.
Have you been talking to our good friend limtex? <g>
You are getting caught up in the Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt that accompanies the transition of any technology from one generation to the next ... complicated right now by a lousy economy and drying up of venture capital.
So it was when PCS rolled out in the United States.
The FCC licensed spectrum and the first phase of the auction (A&B Block) went off without a hitch. Sprint PCS & AT&T Wireless achieved national footprints in 1900 MHz spectrum. Proceeds went right to the bottom line to reduce US debt. The economy was healthy. Venture capital plentiful. Digital wireless mobile technology was on every bodies lips.
Then came 'C" Block (and Later D,E,F), DCR Pocket and NextWave bid licenses out of sight, in quest of national footprints for GSM & CDMA. Economy turned a little south wireless wise, VC dried up. Bankruptcy. Fear that CDMA wouldn't work. Fear that CDMA wouldn't work. Uncertainty about the payback period for digital wireless mobile telephony. Does it sound familiar? Deja Vu.
Look around you. The economy recovered. The networks got built out. CDMA worked spectacularly well. Data is here. We are ready for next generation. The air interface of next generation is CDMA. CDMA is QUALCOMM.
What happened along the way? Lots. M&A everywhere. 300 networks reduced to 150 in 3 years in the US. Six strong ones. Natural selection is at work.
Every major wireless vendor has spent the majority of his R&D or the last several years on 3G3 CDMA, not 2.5G.
<< Honestly, though, what are the chances the initial 100+ umts networks won't be built out? >>
Slim to none. Build em out or lose the licenses. Those are the terms. It is a tough world. Natural selection. Lessons learned. You can't hide behind bankruptcy in the new order.
3G is pretty much right on schedule ... if you have diligently watched the schedules.
Only people that assumed things happen faster than humanely possible in wireless and got caught up in irrational exuberance think its late, or will be delayed unreasonably when things don't happen as quickly as THEY thought it would happen.
The High Tech Hype is out of 3G. The Reality is here. Wireless sector (once the hottest) is ice cold. Dr, Jacobs says 1H will be tough. All wireless leaders say that 1H will be tough. Its the bottom ... that is natural when you are transitioning technology at the end of a generation. Wireless will get warm then hot. Data will lead the way. CDMA will lead the way.
<< The first 100 Euro 3G networks appear to be in the bag...it's the ones after that concern me... >>
Europe AND Asia ... the Americas will follow as will EMEA and the Pacific RIM.
There will be massive M&A and shake out. Natural selection.
Jeffrey Belk of Qualcomm stared that "the real danger for Qualcomm is if carriers choose to stay too long with interim upgrades to their existing GSM, or Global System for Mobile services, networks such as GPRS, rather than forging ahead". He is right of course, and with licenses to pay off and investments to make, the weak species ... like Orange, who publicly blame their plight, as they ready for IPO, on the lack of GPRS handsets. Ten months ago, they were saying that GPRS was going to be so good, and was going to be so ahead of schedule, that they might not need 3G. Hype & Hogwash!
The carriers that think they can avoid investment, or can't afford to invest, and try to ride 2.5G will get swallowed up.
They will be Road Kill.
GPRS is simply temporary interim technology, that provides a moderately priced end of life interim upgrade for legacy systems and provides safe haven while 3G builds out over a four year period.
That is what it is, and that was what it was intended to be.
Like AMPS we will still see vestiges of GPRS at the end of the decade and it will look as antiquated then as AMPS did at the end of this decade.
If QUALCOMM can get cross-modal standards developed and commercialized, some member of the cdma2000 family could potentially extend the life of these legacy laggards even further but the real money is in 3G, so we can start thinking about 4G, or, as Maurice would say, 5G to 10G.
There will be probably 150 major or minor 3G networks in the world when all is done (as compared to over 600 today). All interoperable. 15 major carriers in the world will be left. Same thing that happened to financial institutions in the nineties.
3G is a Trillion dollar market just for the Infrastructure Razors ... add on top the real gravy, the 'thin client' Razor Blades - each with a QUALCOMM chip or QUALCOMM IP inside. Can you count? How fast? How High?
Brng! Brng! Brng! goes the QUALCOMM cash register with a QUALCOMM chip inside.
3G infra starts shipping in quantity this summer with a large ramp in 2000. Twelve to 15 months for handsets in real production quantities ... always handsets ... "God send Mobiles" as George Schmitt (who launched D2, the first all digital voice and data network in the world) once said. I'm sure Oliver Valente of Sprint PCS said similar things and I heard what executives at Bell Atlantic Nynex Mobile said in 1994, 1995, and 1996 while they waited for CDMA mobiles. They were not as polite as George (George wasn't to polite in private either), but they persevered and today they are Verizon, and Verizon is part of Vodafone.
The thin clients will come with advanced processing power, big storage, great displays and new ergonomics.
The services will come, the applications will come, the masses will be converted.
There is lots BREWing.
Don't be impatient. It will perk.
Think Long. Think QUALCOMM.
- EriQ - |
