Tero,
It seems to me that Qualcomm's success hinges to a large extent on whether its CDMA IPR becomes part of W-CDMA or not. If so, all of the potential problems you listed would be seen as temporary setbacks to a great future for Qualcomm; if not, Qualcomm does indeed have a struggle ahead of it.
So it's up to the GSM players in the W-CDMA camp to decide: which is worse, developing W-CDMA without Qualcomm, paying for the engineering and possible delays, developing a non-IS-95 compatible standard, and fighting it out in court; or, conceding IS-95 backward compatibility, negotiating a license fee for Qualcomm, and moving forward. That looks like a tough call to me.
The swing vote is really in the hands of companies who are developing both technologies. Either they will line up against Qualcomm, or against Ericsson. If I were a Nokia or Motorola, I would want W-CDMA to be compatible with my IS-95 phones, and I would see Ericsson as the bigger competitive threat. So I would go with Qualcomm, perhaps even buy it. Why alienate your IS-95 user base, and bail out Ericsson, by ditching Qualcomm?
rhet0ric |
