brational,
while I agree with most your assessments, the path that I see is fundamentally different from yours.
First and foremost, in my opinion, is the migration from a GSM world to a CDMA world. With only ~15% of the market today, the world has already agreed that 3G is going to be 100% CDMA. This is where the opportunity lies for QCOM. So in my simple minded approach, all we have to do is focus on the progress of this migration.
Secondly, we need to measure the success of this migration in terms of penetration and usage to quantify the benefits to QCOM. There is one extremely important intermediate step to the CDMA world and that is the old 2.5G, or 1X vs GPRS/EDGE battle. Unlike WCDMA vs CDMA2000, which QCOM wins in either case, QCOM would not derive any revenue from GPRS. The long GPRS remains in existence, the slower the migration to all CDMA would be.
So where are we now?
Eric the dataman, posted a great set of statistics on the Nokia thread.
Message 17253442
There is only one item missing amidst of all the numbers: subscribers.
Without the subscriber numbers, one could easily be led to believe GPRS, like GSM, is once again the dominate technology of the day.
In reality, we know that 1X has over 6 million subs around the end of Feb with the vast majority from ONE country, Korea. Now that is a successful launch. We all know the other 1X launches that are about to take place.
GPRS, on the other hand, are already operating in 63 countries. 137 operations, 98 in service, had been promoting GPRS with 62 handsets. We know some of these launches are almost from a year ago.
WHY WOULDN'T THEY RELEASE GPRS SUBSCRIBER NUMBERS?
Now that is a good question for 3gamericas, gsmworld, MOT, nokia or anyone who might have the information. I suspect all of the above have the answer but reluctant to release for obvious reasons.
Looking forward, what can GPRS do to change the picture? Not much. This failure is going to accelerate the migration to the all CDMA world.
With this interim GPRS step being a failure, the GSM/GRPS/WCDMA path is now in question. Compounding the problem is the leader of WCDMA - Nokia, who purchased this lead position with vendor financing. Nokia is handset maker, their strength is not in the networks. Furthermore, Nokia has never installed a CDMA network anywhere (is that true?). The chances of Nokia delivering a working WCDMA network this year is practically nil.
Within the next few months, we are going to see the results from Korea 1X evdo, VZ, KDDI .... that could shake up the grand scheme.
On the side note, there are some recent articles about the battle of the lead in the wireless world, between US and Europe. Ironically, they forgot the world is more than US and Europe. As for the lead, Japan and Korea are battling for that position. For third place, US probably got that locked up. Battling for fourth is China and Europe (the countries there have to be combined to compete), with China most likely winning.
Ramsey |
