Whatever happened to that Alcatel order that involved a product redesign, then shift to other Asian suppliers, etc.? There may be a clue in the following extract from an article at thestreet.com in re: potential Alcatel/Lucent merger, wherein the status of Alcatel's handset division was addressed:
<< Alcatel has not made any final decisions about its handset division. As Philips has apparently failed to find a buyer for its own phone division at any price, it seems increasingly likely that Alcatel will be forced to shut down its handset unit and accept a sizable write-off. The alternative is to accept rapidly escalating losses from the consumer unit just as the integration challenges take up management's time and energy. >>
thestreet.com
my comments:
I think it will be longer than many think before telcos install even the 2.5G systems, much less the 3G systems required in order to provide clipped WAP content to a cellphone with a tiny screen. Especially consider that to recoup spectrum and infrastructure costs related with such system conversions, the telcos must and will price the data the same as a phone call (tho on a per-bit basis). Given this, in addition to the limited spectrum, the only useful application for cellular data delivery is clipped text. You would never use it to surf the net or look up a web page on a larger handheld, at those prices. Then consider the disinterested response in Europe to the WAP service, and it is understandable why the American telcos are screeching on the brakes in re: their own '3G rollouts' (really 2.5G and only provided average data rates in the field that are a fraction of the hyped burst rates). This makes it easy to see why there is so little demand for the high-end phones that all the handset makers were counting on, and perhaps explains why Alcatel's one-time plans requiring large numbers of Valence li-poly cells for such handsets changed... it could have been simple lack of demand. Now according to this author, Alcatel may be selling that division outright if a buyer can be found, or maybe just shutting it down.
Recession is wreaking havoc, no light in the tunnel yet. Market head fake. Warnings season coming on, batten the hatches and raise a little cash. |
