W-CDMA [aka VW40] has been a huge success. I don't understand why people are saying that it has failed.
It has been a brilliant success since it was invented by the hagfish guild back in 1886.
The design of it was perfect. The specification spot on. The rollout exact. Customer demand just right.
Nokia's GSM sales continue to be rampant and their market share is near 40% or so. They have made umpty$$billions from the continued dominance of GSM. Sure, some of the other GSM Guild members haven't fared so well, but they still did okay and a heck of a lot better than if Ghengkis Khan's descendants had got into Europe again, wielding cdma2000 phragmented photon light sabres. The gore would have been horrific.
The VW40 vapour-wear bullet-proof vestments performed to perfection. Okay, it's getting a bit frayed around the collar and the crowd is starting to get restless and mutter now that a few little children are pointing out that the King isn't wearing any clothes, let alone beautiful raiment of gold and silver. [Especially the shareholders and creditors who believed the VW40 humbug]. But the VW40 cloak has successfully held off the hungry Asian hordes.
Sure, there had to be a few human sacrifices - the red and bloody mess in a few believers' balance sheets is appalling. But hey, you can't eat roast duck without some sacrifice somewhere [usually the duck].
Had the GSM Guild and the Eurocrats done the decent thing in community-minded spirit, they'd have said "Wow Irwin, that's great stuff you people have invented. We'll pay you 5% royalty happily if you'll let us sell it too".
But they didn't want to do that because Irwin wasn't continuing their oligopoly. He'd let the Koreans and other bandits in too. Now it's every man for himself in free market mayhem. No more the cosy GSM Guild meetings where the consumer is carved up for dinner.
The GSM Guild came up with the perfect specification for VW40. An incompatible chip rate, lack of synchronisation, lots of bells and whistles with lots of promises to intellectual property holders to tempt them into the trap, temptation to the Eurocrats to fool them into ring-fencing the ripoff zone, lots of jamborees to discuss the 'standard' which couldn't work and would take years or preferably decades to 'knock into shape' [jamborees are a LOT of fun, involving time off real work to fly to exotic locations, stay in flash hotels, eat in great restaurants, hobnob with buddies and maybe even ladies away from the responsibilities of home]. They had promises that QUALCOMM didn't have any claim over the intellectual property [because the hagfish invented it themselves]. They had it all sorted out.
The specification has worked like a dream. They fooled millions of people, including the 'experts' in the field [who really wouldn't know a cdma2000 photon from a VW40 one if it went right through their brain].
Undaunted, QUALCOMM accepted the challenge and has, after getting the specification changed to something which can be made in reality, turned VW40 into a real thing. Meanwhile, on the other front, they continued with cdma2000, multimode, multiband, radioOne, gpsOne, BREW, Eudora, Q-chat and all that good stuff.
Now it's checkmate.
The GSM Guild is covered in their own hagfish slime. They are twisting themselves in knots to try to extricate themselves from the mess.
Once-mighty companies like L M Ericsson can be bought by QUALCOMM for petty cash.
Meanwhile, Nokia has managed to leverage their great success with GSM and is ascendant. D'ohCoMo enjoyed continued PHS and other highly profitable sales long after cdma2000 should have been ubiquitous.
But now, the floodgates are open and the stampede outa there has begun. W-CDMA is being shelved everywhere. The cdma2000 curve swoops up. 3gtoday.com 900MHz and 800MHz with GSM1x and cdma2000 are just fine. The expensive 2GHz buildouts are not needed now that so much can be squeezed out of the cheap to build 800-900MHz spectrum thanks to the amazing and wondrous capacity developments by QUALCOMM.
The 1989 40x theoretical capacity is looking very realistic indeed, contrary to that old dead war-horse, Bill Frezza, whose carcass is hereby hauled out again for a ritual flogging.
Congratulations to the VW40 GSM Gang for a successful capital destruction on the scale of Osama's attack on the World Trade Center Twin Towers. It wasn't really very creative, but it sure did get a lot of attention and stopped a lot of people from getting on with life and enjoying it.
It might even have caused a similar number of deaths because of the opportunity cost of no cdma2000 with gpsOne to prevent crime of a murderous nature and enable rescues. Capital destruction is also life destruction because money is diverted from life-preserving efforts into financial entropy. Cyberspace could have been mobile and ubiquitous but for the VW40 shambles.
Yes, W-CDMA has been a great success.
Check out Nokia's share price, revenue and profits for proof. Without GSM and their huge market share, they would be a shadow of their current stature. How's their CDMA market share?
Mqurice |
