BTW, a belated happy 10th anniversary to the stream. It's a full decade since this started. What a LOT has happened. As with so many things, on a day to day basis, not much seems to happen, but looked back on, it's enormous.
And, with umpty mega$billions and umpty petatrillions of phragmented photons, and umpty millions of people coming up with all sorts of telecosmic cyberspace ideas, and burgeoning economies around the world, the fun has just begun.
Ten years ago, the information superhighway was a rutted cattle track. Now, there really is starting to be some swishing and even in mobile services it's getting quick enough to be usable. Not to mention cheap enough.
The pioneers have carved the tracks, now the hordes will charge in and make them multi-lane and fast.
It's surprising that after a decade in SI, we are STILL waiting for CDMA sales to exceed GSM sales, although now that W-CDMA and HSDPA are getting traction and CDMA2000 continues to burgeon, the time is rapidly approaching. It is NOT surprising when one realizes that GSM/GPRS/EDGE were enabled by QCOM technology [without royalties] and Nokia is now being brought to justice over it.
Reviewing the original header:
<Will CDMA succeed in Los Angeles [at last]?>
Yes it has been wildly successful in LA for years and continues to thrive, with MediaFLO ready to rumble [albeit in OFDM, which is quite exciting considering the original threat OFDM seemed] and megabit per second mobile cyberspace available to CDMA subscribers.
<How is CDMA going in Hong Kong, Korea, Trenton? Do people like it?>
Korea is absolutely full of it and saturated and in huge upgrade cycles. Trenton like Los Angeles. Hong Kong took a long time to get traction and is a W-CDMA place. People love it, but it needs to be cheaper and faster still, with better devices, such as Iridigm screens, and better battery life. Where are those fuel cells which have been promised for years? Still no methanol top ups for batteries.
<Will China be the biggest CDMA market?>
China is in the process of making a huge blunder by pushing TD-SCDMA. They should ditch it and go nuts on CDMA2000. They would be able to gain huge market share and rapidly leap to the forefront of mobile cyberspace with their huge economies of scale and low internal royalties. With their low-cost production, they could export devices and even with 7% royalty, [which is trivial] dramatically undercut the evil-doing Nokians and GSM Guild.
In an attempt to avoid a derisory royalty, China is going to miss a vast global opportunity. I am not surprised.
<What technical developments are going on?>
$1bn a year in R&D just for QCOM [QCOM was only worth $4bn a decade ago]. Then there are swarms of other companies just in CDMA. Plus all the OFDM. Wifi is just getting traction, with nearly all notebooks wifi enabled. Wimax is lining up. Plus all the cyberspace investments tumbling over each other. Google is great. But look at YouTube. Out of nowhere and worth $billions before I'd heard of it. Faster and faster, cheaper and cheaper, more and more people, bigger and bigger. Zygote to Zeitgeist - still only under construction.
<Has Nextwave Telecom bid too much in PCS spectrum auctions?>
No they didn't. The spectrum was cheap, contrary to popular myth at the time. Mq disagreed they had paid too much. What I didn't realize at the time was that spectrum cost showed how much QCOM had undercharged for royalties, which became apparent in Y2K with the $100bn bid for European spectrum. The countries which gave spectrum away, transferred huge wealth to the recipients. Cyberphone services sell for what the market will bear. It's not a cost-plus business. If somebody gets free spectrum, it doesn't mean they sell their services for a cheaper price. It means they were given a LOT of money [unless the spectrum has not much value due to a surplus of it, which might well be the case when things are done right with picocells avoiding spectrum pollution and avoiding the need for huge expensive base stations on civil engineering towers].
<Will notebook computers with built in CDMA phone take the world by storm?>
They have been a very long time coming, but they are finally starting to be available. But they are still not the norm. Give it another couple of years. But there are PDAs which are computers more powerful than the BIG computers back in 1996, so I suppose they are taking the world by storm. Check out the Blackberry, Apache, Treo and all the rest - sales are huge.
<Will you get rich from CDMA and Qualcomm?>
Yes. But hanging onto it is another story. Many were rich, then broke. Y2K took a lot of people with it. But from a revenue point of view, CDMA has produced $trillions in value for Earth. From a profit point of view, Koreans are trying to whine about royalties while giggling their way to the bank. Whining and giggling are difficult to do simultaneously.
QUALCOMM has made many $billions and has over $10bn stacked up in cash [and equivalents] despite a lot going down the gurgler in "strategic investments" which were tactical disasters.
QCOM is just getting going, with a rapid growth rate, P:E in the mid 20s and W-CDMA/HSDPA and EV-DO and so on burgeoning. The big R&D investments are getting their returns now as sales boom. Each copy of software sold and each royalty payment drops straight to the bottom line and ASIC sales mostly get there.
<Related topics: Eudora - the email you are probably using>
See previous post.
<Globalstar - the satellite phone system >
Here we go again. Take 2 underway. Message 22894457
A great system was ruined by dopey, greedy, oligopolistic telecom marketers who thought the world owed them a living [in the manner to which they'd become accustomed] and who hadn't heard of the recently invented economic theory called "supply and demand" in which when there's a LOT of something, the price is lowered to increase demand, and when the crowds are clamouring for more, the price is increased to ensure everyone who wants it can get it when they want it.
When a huge amount of capital, or even a small amount, has to be spent to build a system, the product or service should be sold CHEAPLY to build demand rapidly, until capacity is reached, then prices increased to avoid overloading.
Mqurice |
