Some look at the order book.
And some wonder when the orders will actually get shipped.
Some say "show me the money."
Kinda makes me wonder about how "firm" some of these orders are when we get the Nokians, on the subject of 3G vendor financing, saying, in effect, "hey, these are just commitments, but there's lots of contingencies and waffle room here and there."
I contracted to sell some land last year to an office condo developer, who promptly went out, launched a marketing campaign and signed contracts with 17 or so office condo end-users. Impressive order book, 50% of his project pre-sold. Unfortunately, he was quite a bit away from closing on the land and breaking ground. Much longer than he thought. Here tell now that about 75% of that order book has fallen by the wayside.
One thing I've learned the hard way is how vulnerable this industry's revenues are to product transition gaps. Nokia, with all its strategic brilliance (I mean that sincerely, not sarcastically) is in a bit of an air pocket now. QCOM arguably hit it earlier, and whether 1XRTT take-up or China IS-95 materially fills their gap this year remains to be seen.
Nokia's year hinges on GPRS handset shipments in the 4th quarter. But 2-3 million handsets are a drop in the bucket to NOK's top line.
What vendor will be the first to show meaningful top line growth coming out of this slump? When? Why? Hard investing questions, I'm trying to answer now. I think QCOM, but as Eric has pointed out, there's a possible air pocket after 1XRTT. OTOH, if WAP 2.0 is as robust as hoped, and NOK gets the GPRS product out the door, we could see a sales boom along the same lines of i-mode, which was no great technological feat, but a triumph of money-making.
Who will show us the money first? And when will they show it? |
