However, these other companies that Qualcomm provided resale Asic licenses to.. Namely DSP Comm, VLSI, and PrarieCom. were all small players.. None of which had the financial resources necessary to undertake a credible challenge to Qualcomm..IMO The larger companies like MOT, NOK, and ERICY were restricted to "self supply" limitations! So the "Economics of Scale" so to speak were never allowed!!
If my memory is not failing, I believe it was DSC, which was acquired by Intel. VLSI, I think, was acquired by Philips. They both tried but failed to invent a better mouse trap than QCOM. I believe there should be no disagreement that Intel and Philips are not exactly small players.
Ironically, it is indeed the small non-public company, Prarie, that is hanging in there.
As for Nok, Mot and Ericy, these three have dominated the handset market for the entire history of wireless. If Nokia has 30+% of the global handset market and CDMA is about 15% of the global market. Nokia sells more handsets than all the cdma handsets combined. I think calling that limiting economy of scales may be rather illogical.
I am not an engineer but I have learned to appreciate this CDMA thing is just not all that simple. No one appears to be able to do it as well as QCOM.
Today, we often say that this is an 80/20 GSM/CDMA world. In 4-5 years, it is going to be a practically 100% CDMA world regardless of flavor. We can debate every minute detail to death here but the fact remains that there is no 3G standards that is not CDMA. If there is one company that is better positioned than qcom to handle the upcoming scenario, I would like to know what it is so I can invest in it right now.
Ramsey |
