Proprietary Technologies
<< All "proprietary" means in this instance is a derisory 5% royalty. >>
A technology is proprietary when its architecture (open or closed) is controlled by a single company, whether or not that company chooses to monetize its IP or not, and in my statement I ignored royalty flow entirely.
There have been some - but relatively few - extraordinarily successful companies that have been able to secure proprietary control of a technology's open architecture and make their technology the de facto industry standard -- Intel, Microsoft, Cisco, e.g..
In this instance it means that the technology evolves the way the proprietor sees fit to evolve it, and it arrives without functionality that operators require because it potentially increases ROI -- portable subscription, numbering plan to facilitate cross border roaming, 2-way SMS, QoS, multitasking of voice and data, dynamic frequency allocation, Bluetooth, support for HLOS, etc. Eventually these get worked in, but at well behind their GSM/3GSM implementations.
In this instance it means that lack of foresight into the needs and potential of emerging markets allowed continuously evolving and highly scalable GSM to skyrocket past CDMA.
In this instance it has resulted in a single viable source of base station and mobile station modems, in an industry that demands multiple sourcing of every fixture down to the component level.
In this instance it means that the full body of vendor participants spun their wheels almost 4 years, and wasted significant resources in 3GPP2 evolving cdma2000 from R'0 (IS-2000) to R'A (IS-2000A) to R'B, R'C, R'D, while QUALCOMM evolved its proprietary technology in house and works with a small ad hoc in the background to develop it further and standardize it and leaves cdma2000 blowing in the wind and stuck at R'0. Key members of the potential CDSMA value chain -- the healthiest financially -- exit and focus their development, marketing, distribution, and support resources where they can achieve a better ROI.
On the upside, QUALCOMM enjoys industry high margins for its CDMA chipset business and the value add passes to them. On the downside economies of scale never catch up to GSM/3GSM, and adoption continues to deteriorate.
<< There is the issue of QCOM technology being used to make GSM/GPRS/EDGE work - still to be determined. >>
Yes, and perhaps the validity of both patents they claim will be upheld in the UK, France, Germany, and Italy, despite there untimely declaration, which in an of itself may be grounds for invalidation. Then again, perhaps not. Of course in Rudi bRoosters playground perhaps all 11 will be, even the 3 that allegedly claim that QUALCOMM holds essential patents in the AMR and WB-AMR codecs (along with a dozen others that hold them and actually developed the codecs).
<< Without that, perhaps GSM would have been long gone. >>
Perhaps. A low likelihood, however, wouldn't you say?
<< Anyway, it's all history now. In NZ, nearly all new phones are CDMA-based [W version or 2000]. Same in Japan, same in Korea. >>
It isn't all history now and there is no W version of QUALCOMM proprietary CDMA2000, and 3GSM UMTS (WCDMA) is not only non-proprietary and collaboratively developed, but QUALCOMM made virtually no contributions to it until mid-2001 when they realized CDMA2000 would eventually be cdmaTOAST.
In the interim QUALCOMM will likely spend the rest of the decade defending itself and its licensing practices in multiple global jurisdictions while it tries to convince
jurists and anti-competition committee members with IQ's that are considerably higher than their GQ's that if they are allowed to be the R&D (and IPR) aggregator for the mobile wireless industry that the industry will benefit.
Best,
- eQ - |
