Jon:
Radio Shack store-level employees are so far down the information food-chain that there is no reason to expect them to know (a) what handset decisions are being made by Sprint at the corporate level, (b) what capacity constraints QPE is operating under, (c) the current state of the supply chain or (d) when any particular model will be available (beyond what Tandy has cleared from distribution).
R/S people can be a decent source regarding customer satisfaction (with rate plans, handset performance, form factors et cetera), but beyond this--with all due respect to these individuals--the information quality quickly descends to the "noise" level.
Regarding a previous question about ASICs, VLSI and DSP should both be close to IS-95 chipset availability (and both are QC licensees, so they will pay royalties). Pantech (the recent MOT investee) is a QC handset licensee that buys ASICs from Qualcomm. MOT, in the near-term, is getting the QC ASIC by OEM'ing handsets from Pantech. Galvin's comment on the MOT conference call suggested that the company would be willing to redesign its U.S. sourced handsets to accept the QC ASIC (presumably if MOT's ASIC cannot be brought up to spec near-term). Remember, however, it is non-trivial to replace an ASIC in a handset, both from an engineering standpoint and from a customer compliance perspective. This is why MOT went to the Koreans first (i.e. time-to-market pressures).
Best Regards,
Gregg |
