A review, 9 years later:
<Will CDMA succeed in Los Angeles [at last]?
How is CDMA going in Hong Kong, Korea, Trenton? Do people like it?
Will China be the biggest CDMA market?
What technical developments are going on?
Has Nextwave Telecom bid too much in PCS spectrum auctions?
Will notebook computers with built in CDMA phone take the world by storm?
Will you get rich from CDMA and Qualcomm?
Related topics: Eudora - the email you are probably using
Globalstar - the satellite phone system >
Yes, CDMA has succeeded in Los Angeles, and everywhere else. It is also the 3G mechanism for delivering mobile cyberspace. CDMA is rampant in Korea and Trenton and lining up in Hong Kong for 3G services after a failed introduction way back in 1995. China will be the biggest CDMA market but there is still a while to go, after some geopolitical blunders such as bombing the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, and the huge success of GSM legacy system technological improvements.
There are lots of technical developments such as Iridigm though others such as Wingcast, Wireless Knowledge, Graviton and so on bit the dust. R&D budgets for QCOM are at record levels.
It is now finally proven that Nextwave Telecom did NOT bid too much for C-block spectrum. The cash has changed hands and the $4.3bn [approximately] was a bargain. The spectrum could have been sold for $16bn at the peak.
Notebook computers with CDMA built in are still not endemic, though mini-computer cyberphones are rapidly gaining ground. W-CDMA and 1xEV-DO are only just getting going in a big way. Device prices are high and so are data charges. Competition needs to bring prices down.
Yes, you could easily have got rich from CDMA and QUALCOMM and many have.
Eudora has struggled in the personal computer industry against MSFT bloatware but has always maintained a handy market share. Now, with Eudora2go running on BREW, there's a major opportunity to gain ground.
Globalstar is gaining ground, with bankruptcy out of the way and market and technical development proceeding. At some stage, after another constellation is launched, gateways are upgraded and another round of subscriber device improvement is achieved, Globalstar will be a huge success. globalstar.com and globalstar.com.au for examples of what's on offer.
9 years ago, QUALCOMM and CDMA were in infancy, being sustained by OmniTRACS and shareholder input. OmniTRACS is now lost in the financial details. CDMA was struggling to become established in commercial operation. Now it's the zeitgeist.
It has been 20 years since QUALCOMM was started.
The next 10 years will see the big commercial developments with continuing technological gains powering those developments now that CDMA is the lingua franca of mobile cyberspace.
Mqurice |
