It is so much easier to make a looking backward judgement of what should have been done than it was to be at the point of decision and have to make a judgement on what would it take to win a market.
One can take the same approach to criticizing the infrastrucure division that IMJ built up. At the time, it was the only way to force the LU/MOT people to stop promoting NAMPS/TDMA and get them into making CDMA. but in 1998, if you looked at it, you had LU, MOT, and NT all making CDMA infrastrucure and the value of that group was no longer viable. Q had alot of vendor finanacing and alot of R&D burn rate at the time they sold the division and you could have criticized that alot. but at the time the division choice was made to build the industry and get it out there commercially, it was the right choice.
If you continue to play monday morning quarterback, then perhaps you can pick and choose what you want to criticize, but in some of these the investment was made for a specific reason at the time. And on some of these, even though they may be looking bad now, the long term point for exit and profit has not been reached.
Even G*, which at the moment seems to have no value may come back to be a giant investment that Q made wisely. Or NextWave. Even though these have been written down now, they may still come back with future value.
And on CDMAOne being a legacy, it will continue to be used in the lower capacity locaitons for a long time, just as the 1984 technology known as AMPS is still the most viable backbone of the entire AT&T network and the entire wireless network in the US.... |
