<A cautionary note was struck by Dr Irwin Jacobs, founder and chief executive of US Qualcomm, the US electronics group behind third generation mobile phone technology. Dr. Jacobs said that 3G services were unlikely to be roll out until late 2004 or early 2005, in contrast to most European operators, who have previously suggested 3G will be ready from 2002 onwards. >
That's not what he said. The next post quotes him more accurately. What he said was that W-CDMA [VW-40] won't be ready for half a decade. He also said that cdma2000 will be ready before half a decade. Specifically, cdma2000 will be ready next year. It's funny that there was a huge panic because people don't listen carefully.
What they should have heard was that cdma2000 will be rolled out in Korea, Japan, USA, New Zealand, Mexico and elsewhere. Oh, goodness me, what will China do for 3G? Oh gosh, I suppose they'll go to cdma2000. That then leaves the VW-40 service providers in a quandary. Do they wait until 2005 or switcheroo to cdma2000 and get a piece of the 3G action? Well, that seems to be what they call a no-brainer.
I'm puzzled by the VW-40 delay though, because QUALCOMM has a W-CDMA ASIC nearly ready. So why the delay? Maybe it isn't working all that well and it'll take another 3 years to have it good enough compared with cdma2000. Or perhaps Dr Jacobs is pointing out that Nokia and co really don't want W-CDMA ready any time soon so they will keep it on a slow burner. They don't want it ready because GSM profits are enormous.
The the GSM Guild holds a convention and, surprise, surprise, the declare that 3G is overhyped and GPRS and GSM is just fine for a few years. It's not really surprising that people selling horse and buggy don't think there'll be a market demand for Model T Fords any time soon. Attending the buggy-whip afficianodo's meeting isn't the way to find out how many cars people will buy. But the world's media have gobbled it up so 75 million QUALCOMM shares are sold. What a joke! 75 million is the highest volume [split-adjusted] in QUALCOMM ever [10% of the company's stock as well as the biggest outright number] That is going to be one of the world's biggest legal and civilized transfers of wealth ever in human history on a single day. Victories in wars don't count. The new owners of QUALCOMM are going to make a huge fortune. There might have been bigger dollar values traded on a day, but in a few years, the size of the real wealth transfer will be evident.
While Irwin has always said that the worst issue about W-CDMA is that delays might occur [thanks Nokia and co], I can't help but think this is being parlayed into an all-out rout of GSM, GPRS, EDGE and VW-40 by cdma2000. This is like watching Bobby Fischer play chess when he was the King; popping his knight over there in the rope-a-dope position [which is what Mohammed Ali used to win a boxing match]. I listened to a radio broadcast when Ali used his rope-a-dope technique and it sounded from the commentary that he was on the ropes and losing. But no, after a few rounds of rope-a-dope, he sprang off the ropes and pounded the bad buy into submission. Likewise, Bobby Fisher's knight came bounding off the ropes [the side of the board] and splattered poor Spassky with a looping punch out of nowhere.
II would not be surprised to learn that Irwin knows about both knights on the side of the board [they are conventionally and unimaginatively meant to be dominating the centre of the board] and rope-a-dope.
My bet is an early victory for cdma2000 when 1xRTT and other CDMA data offerings turn out to be much more popular than i-mode. That will only happen if the service providers are able to figure out that they should put their knight on the side of the board, lean on the ropes and offer data on a megabyte basis [rather than per minute], with a 3/100ths of a second response time and at a LOW price [they will make more money with a LOW price, which, like a knight on the side of the board, is not conventional thinking].
The stupid Globalstar marketers charged absurdly high prices because everyone [who is conventional and unimaginative] knows it's important not to have price destruction, undersell, and get on the ropes or on the side of the board. They ruined Globalstar. So far, the Kyocera Son of pdQ is using a per minute rate for data. That'll be the death knell of it and the unimaginative will think that proves 3G is a dog. It will not.
3G with great little devices such as the Son of pdQ [which I held in my hot little hand a couple of days ago] or a Hitachi cdma2000-enabled notebook puter can be a wildly huge success and make the slow and expensive, spectrum-wasting anachronistic, non-html i-mode look a pathetic joke. But not at 10c a minute for service. Think megabyte. The delivery mechanism will be cdma2000.
What a brilliant exposition of standards development and competitive action Irwin Jacobs and co have given.
QUALCOMM is a major buy! Not a sell. 3G will be a huge success [not VW-40].
So, a nice weekend and then an interesting stockholder's meeting.
Wheee!!!
Mqurice
Dow 16,000 Feb 2002
Q! $201 in 2001
First $1 trillion company on earth [including Spinco, Globalstar etc which we also own]. |
