I think this has been covered in the various QCOM meetings that have been available over the Internet. The audio, fast access to SEC filings and news provided by the Internet are invaluable to me. A few years ago, only the "big guys" could listen to the CC and other presentations. Now "us little guys" can listen also and can spend the time to pay close attention to the audio. In my case, I always liked to listen rather than talk, and find that body language and voice inflections, etc, are very useful. Listening closely to the QCOM audio, I think the following points on WCDMA are pertinent to your concerns.
1 In response to many questions on CSM, TT always makes the statement that the earnings due to sale of CSMs is inconsequential, IE, a rounding error.
2. Dr J usually chimes in that even though the revenue from CSMs is small, it is important to get lots of base stations out so that there will be support for many phones. Also, since the latest CSM supports 32 channels, they command a "nice" margin. Also, he seems to feel the WCDMA spec is not quite done.
3. Don S gives the number of CSM sold by giving the number of channels. Also stated recently that the WCDMA CSM was being delayed by the still changing WCDMA spec. The hardware part of the spec is stable but the higher levels are still changing. IE, the WCDMA parts are hard to test and the software requirements are unknown.
4. Someone ( Dr J?) stated that a few single channel CSMs are still being sold as well as 8 channel and 32 channel ones. ( a channel is four fingers in the rake receiver required to support one phone). This explains why they want to talk channels sold rather than numbers of CSMs.
From this, I think we can conclude that QCOM makes very little money from the CSMs and should place more effort on MSMs and other efforts such as GSM1x.
OT, How can the SPs provide so many minutes of free long distance per month? How do they provide the LD? Sprint and VZ and the others all have a LD service of their own that they use? Since I am "testing" both Sprint and VZ CDMA phones and their coverage in SoCal and have thousands of unused minutes each month, I wish I had some "interesting" phone numbers I could use to "test" the service. Perhaps it would be better than using SI? |
