limtex,
re: QCOM
<< I understand W-CDMA and the whole 3-G deployment issue >>
I submit that if you understand W-CDMA Richard Sulpizio's way, you don't understand W-CDMA and the whole 3G deployment issue. You understand only a small fragment of what 3G will be all about, and how we will need to focus here on tornados generated by 3G..
<< 3-G is going to be CDMA and that is that >>
3G3 is going to be CDMA and that is not in question. That makes QUALCOMM a great investment, long term. The fact that they are the gorilla of (2G) CDMA makes then a fine investment shorter term, because as it relates to discussions on this board, they are enjoying the benefits of the completive advantage period, in a small but not insignificant sector of wireless.
I think I have overheard a thread elder (Merlin) conversing in another forum, and suggesting that 3G3 might not spawn a gorilla and we could potentially have a gorillaless tornado when the tornados generated by 3G occur. Mike can tell me (and I'm sure he will), if I am stating that incorrectly.
Whether or not Merlin agrees with me, I think that within 3G, gorllaless tornados may well occur, but it is a little early in the game to determine that.
We may be discussing whether QUALCOMM is a Chimp in the ensuing tornados.
I am hoping that QUALCOMM can play a gorilla role, but I may take a basket approach to this and I have already started to do so.
<< that will cause the opposition to search for alternative strategies....well they already have....they have gone for a system that no-one has working to finality, that is at least a year or so behind that is more costly etc when they could have 1X today. >>
I was somewhat disappointed when listening to Richard's fine pitch about QUALCOMM's fine product line that I did not discern much strategy for proliferating 1x beyond a rather narrow incumbent user base, and a few important prospects, or how they will achieve requisite interoperability with other modes of 2G & 3G systems beyond that base. Multi-mode handset chips will provide some level of interoperability, but not full interoperability.
1x as it is working today in a commercial trial environment, is not compliant with any ITU IMT-2000 standard.
The 1x family is 6 months to 1 year behind W-CDMA in IMT-2000 standardization. That is NOT an opininion, it is fact, and standardization precedes commercialization, which in turn precedes deployment and mass market acceptance or hypergrowth.
Sulpizio's statements about the 3GPP UMTS 'Release 99' and 'Release 2000' standard (there is none) would be hilarious if I wasn't a QUALCOMM shareholder, and didn't know where they were in the standardization process.
Richard's treatment of the 8th slide "Development Process for Any New Wireless System" was pretty sophomoric and he is fortunate he had a friendly audience.
Sulpizio's comment about DoCoMo's commercial trial limiting data transmission rates to 64 kbps mirrors a 4 month old statement out of DoCoMo, and contradicts the statement made in early December by Akira Hiroike of DoCoMo that downlink speeds of 384 kbps and uplink speeds will be 64 kbps on day one.
We are going to have to wait at least till June to get further visibility on that, and who has credibility, and perhaps we will get better visibility than we have enjoyed with the October "commercial launch" of 1xRTT at SKT where some say transmission speeds were limited to 64 kbps initially.
Now, if you hear what typical user speeds are currently being enjoyed at SKT, 3 months after "launch", Id appreciate hearing it. I have heard that they are "very good" but am not sure exactly what that means. I am hopeful that typical user rate on the downlink, will approach the peak data rates of 153 kbps claimed (mobile and pedestrian) which in turn is 291 kbps lower than the IMT-2000 requisite 384 kbps in a pedestrian environment.
I DID most enjoyed Richard's enthusiasm for BREW.
BREW is a potentially very exciting product. Nothing is yet packaged so completely in competing technologies. Bits and pieces are scattered about. It will be interesting to see if QUALCOMM can exploit this, beyond the cdma2000 potential user base, and what strategy they will employ to accomplish this. To date their standardization efforts, outside of their own proprietary and open standards, has not been very successful, but their is certainly an opportunity here.
<< He is very clear and informative >>
I am very glad to see Richard's pep talk gave you a lift.
We should all be glad QUALCOMM is going to save the W-CDMA day. Rich sure painted a bleak (but perhaps in many cases realistic) picture of W-CDMA adoption and rollout.
The world is going 3G3 CDMA, but not quite at the pace we impatient investor would like.
As Rich's slides said "Optimizing system and handset performance - takes several years", "adding rich feature sets for multi-media - takes several years" and both loop back to "setting a firm specification for systems and handsets", establishes the foundation for this and "significant efforts are required after standards are set". All this with network to network interoperability a key issue, and of course mass market takeup (hypergrowth), a key gorilla gaming issue.
Links (Sulpizio's Presentation - Breakout) for anyone that has not listened (and every QUALCOMM investor should) are:
veracast.com
veracast.com
- Eric - |
