Jim, that was fascinating. I think that even if there is a court battle the implementation of W-CDMA won't be stopped in the meanwhile. How often have there been major injunctions in IPR disputes like this?
mike, both Nokia and Ericsson have patents on W-CDMA, of course. Who said they didn't? I don't think you can just dismiss W-CDMA out of hand... very few people here seem to know much about it in the first place. It's very strongly endorsed by Japan and even if single Japanese companies don't always get their wish (Sony & Betamax) a standard endorsed both by Japanese government and the world's biggest cellular operator is nothing to scoff at.
Has everyone forgotten that Korean companies like Samsung have already jumped on W-CDMA bandwagon? This shows that even in a country where GSM has been outlawed W-CDMA has gained substantial support. How does that fit with the conception of W-CDMA as some sort of devious GSM ploy? When you combine the clout of ETSI, Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola (which accepted the Docomo invitation to join W-CDMA handset development unit), major European operators, Japanese government, all major Japanese mobile phone companies heavily investing in W-CDMA R&D, NTT-Docomo and Korean manufacturers you get a lot of momentum.
If you think that Qualcomm has no downside just wait a month. And the current sea change in global handset market shares has not been yet incorporated into Nokia's stock price. The next two quarters will show that. Wouldn't we all want to pick the next Microsoft, a small company that has room to grow by 1'000%. The sad truth is that the next Microsoft often turns out to be the next Netscape or Silicon Graphics. Remember when it looked like they would own the world by year 2000? It often makes more sense to invest in a company that has a solid shot at 30-40% profit growth in the long term. I have very little money to invest and if I want to gamble it I'll go to Atlantic City.
Tero |
