Tero, good to see you haven't given up your entertainment value.
I don't agree with your assessment on everyone's "dependence"
on Qualcomm chips. It appears obvious to me that QCOM knows
it can't drown the world in handsets by itself and that is the
only reason I can think of for a provider to deploy the European
GSM standard in the US: IS95A handset availability.
There are no fewer than FIVE companies developing IS95A chipsets.
You should know of at least three of them by now, Tero.
Handset chip competition benefits the propagation of IS95.
Why else would QCOM license that activity? Protectionism???
Nokia, and Motorola have decided to start chip development first.
But, we will never know what could have been if they had started
out producing phones with QCOM's chip a year ago. Did they pass
up the opportunity to master manufacturing challenges because of
their chip development delays?
"sudden chip price hikes from QCOM" Hmm... QCOM base
station sales could improve from ALL handset sales. Eveyone
refines chip designs to improve their specs and come up with
a smaller die cost, why would the price go up? They don't
appear to own their own chip fab. Why would costs rise with
five other chips pending?
Qcom is emerging victorius from an apparent no-win situation.
Either QCOM could have stayed out of phones for whatever personal
beliefs YOU have and lose the IS95 window of opportunity forever.
QCOM has risked millions going into the phone business.
Look at what they faced: they had little experience, they had to
start from scratch to build the production lines, and they had
to figure out how to get high manufacturing yields out of the
biggest test nightmare the electronics industry has ever faced.
Not only is QCOM making money at it, but they are also proving
that IS95 is the superior wireless solution. It makes absolutely
no sense on technical merits to deploy GSM:
The best voice quality.
All the cool PCS messaging features.
If all batteries are equal, CDMA will last longer than GSM.
Voice security will always be superior.
Fastest computer data rate using one channel.
More than twice the capacity of GSM.
Who the hell actually goes overseas and *really* cares
about seamless roaming???
When phone useage starts to saturate GSM, what are those
providers going to do? Either find neighborhoods ready
to blight their landscape with more of those damn antenna arrays
or raise their talk rates. Buying more base stations appears to be
a very small part of the problem compared to finding a place to
put it.
Then, there is Globalstar.
Considering they have managed to assemble manufacturing facilities
that already have the capacity of better than half of Ericy's with
10% of the personnel, I feel that next year will be very interesting.
ChuckJ, there are better things to worry about than Nokia
"stealing" Qualcomm talent. There are 85 companies trying to
get handsets on the market and there are enough beaming Qcom
employees running around San Diego that shows me Dr. Jacobs has
read the Dilbert Guide to Management. Which would you work for? |
