Lars, as a long time investor (over 45 years experience), it is not difficult for me to understand why some people would think that QUALCOMM sales, engineering, and management are enthusiastic about their products. After all, the products work better than those made by competitors. Yet others are worried that because QUALCOMM products are designed better and work better than the competition, the competition will suffer too much. Therefore, it is only natural that older companies with market power, but without the latest technology, attempt to force political decisions on service providers, rather than accept rational economic ones.
Old ideas die hard. RCA, which dominated AM radio from the 1920's to the 1950's, at one point tried very hard to discourage the adoption of FM as a replacement for AM because the FM patents had been willed to the industry by Col. Armstrong, the chief designer of the FM circuit. RCA of course did not want to lose royalties on the outmoded AM superheterodyne circuit, and deliberately sold FM table models with poor quality speakers and tuners that drifted away from the frequency. Eventually other companies built really good quality FM sets, and RCA lost both AM and FM business. If there is a lesson here, it is that Nokia and its cronies are attempting similar kinds of manipulation of the market for wireless phones by imposing on customers a system that is inherently more expensive, less efficient, and wasteful of scarce spectrum. Like RCA, Nokia's old ideas are bound to fail because there still are enough parts of the world where competition and cooler heads prevail. |
