JMD,
I'm an engineering consultant in digital communications who is based in San Diego so I can't afford to anger the QCOM people. So I try to be careful when I speak about CDMA. I believe CDMA is better technology than GSM. Although I also believe QCOM has over-hyped it in the past. I think that in the future, wideband CDMA will be a better performer than the current narrowband CDMA. The problem is not with the technology. The problem is market share. With Europe adopting a single unified standard, this allows companies to amortize their NRE over a much wider base. This allows prices to fall rapidly. Cost is what wins technology wars, not performance. Think Beta vs. VHS, Mac vs. DOS, etc. I think this is the key point that George Gilder overlooks. He just falls in love with whatever he believes is the best technology. He doesn't pay enough attention to things like management ability, cost, profits, market share, etc. These things are more important to investors than who has the sexiest technology.
Generally I'm not a big fan of govt. regulation, but digital cell phone standards may be an example where the US is hurt by not having one national standard. None of our standards have the customer base that GSM does. I saw a recent article in one of the big magazines (Forbes or Fortune) talking about this. I don't follow the cell industry really closely, but the last I heard, GSM was doing much better than CDMA in Asia. CDMA had S. Korea (by govt. edict, not competition) and parts of China. But GSM had a much bigger share in China and the rest of Asia. If this is out of date, please let me know.
Rick |
