A couple of recent factoids:
"NEW YORK, Feb. 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Last week in Japan, ETSI
(the European Telecommunications Standards Institute), Japan's
standards group ARIB (Association of Radio Industries and Business) the TTA (standards body for Korea), and the United States TIA's TR 46.1, formally united behind a single wideband CDMA standard for the International Telecommunications Unions' (ITU), IMT 2000. The new 3G single global standard will provide wireline quality voice, high speed data, multimedia, efficient mobile internet access at data rates up to 5 Mbps and will allow for the much anticipated, global roaming. In contrast, the rival system CDMA-One, has received almost no support since it is not backward compatible to GSM (Global System for Mobile), the major 2G communication system used throughout the world."
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"By the end of this year, NTT DoCoMo expects to have specifications for WCDMA fully defined and a 3G trial system in place, says Bhatia of Nokia, which is providing user terminals for NTT DoCoMo's WCDMA test. The carrier plans to have a widespread commercial WCDMA system in operation around the turn of the century, he says."
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"The Korean WLL system will likely be the first commercial deployment of a standardized system based on W-CDMA technology.
Garrettson added, ''W-CDMA technology has been selected by ETSI as
the air interface technology for Universal Mobile Telecommunications
System (UMTS) and will likely play a major role in the International
Telecommunications Union's process for defining IMT-2000, the Third
Generation wireless system.''"
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Taken together, this all suggests that
A) Koreans are firmly behind the Nordic W-CDMA
B) NTT is firmly behind W-CDMA, and since trials start this year, it's much too late to work in IS-95 compatibility into the standard
C) CDMAone, an alternative for Nokia/Ericsson developed W-CDMA is in big trouble
D) Nokia already has W-CDMA terminals and trials will start *this year*
E) W-CDMA sales will start in Japan sooner than in Europe, conceivably in 2000 or 2001
Nobody is talking about the "demise" of IS-95, as Quincy so dramatically put it. But this standard apparently came up a day late and a dollar short. GSM will continue to mushroom into 300 million end-users in the near future, and apparently its successor, W-CDMA has now so much momentum that it will take over as a global standard.
New standards are always tricky and it's impossible to project excatly how W-CDMA will fare. But it has such broad backing from both manufacturers and operators that it looks like a reasonable bet.
This all explains Nokia's dramatic surge into 104 last week, even without any major announcements.
Referring to your earlier comment, I *am* fascinated by Motorola's recent disastrous performance. It's relevant to Nokia's future. Apparently Motorola's infrastructure market share has collapsed from 25% to 15% recently (mirroring the handset plunge). After getting a flood of bad publicity last week from main stream media ranging from "USA Today" to a truly vituperative "Wall Street Journal" article this company has a major credibility problem.
There are only three companies in the world that have real credentials as both infrastructure and handset companies, and after Motorola hit the skids, the influence of Nokia and Ericsson is increased. Nokia is fighting in March for a major Belgian TETRA network deal (500 M dollars or so) and the comments about Motorola's dreadful network performance came at the best possible time. Nokia has sold TETRA networks to Australia, England, Denmark, Netherlands and Finland. No other company has sold even one. If Nokia can defeat Motorola in March and extend its streak into half a dozen consecutive TETRA deals, it is positioned as virtually owning the market. This matters, because all Western countries are set to introduce a digital official network (police, fire departments, etc) in the next 3-5 years. If Belgium spends that much money on TETRA, the combined bill of all developed countries will be pretty stiff. The first commercial sale to England shows that also corporations are interested in TETRA.
It's another case of a new standard that nobody even knew of two years ago and now stands on brink of rapid growth and fat profit margins for a company that has an edge. I think Ericsson hasn't even entered the bidding wars, because it doesn't have the product ready yet. Another reason to love NOKA... I'll stop now before I get all sentimental.
Tero
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