Warning - contains passages of graphic dead horse flogging. May offend minors and Ericsson/Qualcomm stockholders. Viewer discretion and parental guidance advised.
Buckeye, I've heard second hand info from two different sources about the Finnish subcontractors of Nokia - apparently they are ramping up component manufacturing as fast as they can. Texas Instruments has been a pretty good indicator of Nokia's sales before - DSP chips are increasingly important for them. So far, everything seems to indicate a very strong second half.
Ericsson's new product announcements were interesting. They had two very promising products - GSM/analog phone and GSM 900/1900 phone, which allows roaming in USA, Europe, Asia, etc. The first is very important since places like Chicago and Dallas still lack GSM - this could substantially expand the appeal of GSM. The latter is a strong alternative for satellite phones. Even at hefty 200+ grams the Ericsson world phone weighs just a fraction of an Iridium phone and will have a price tag of maybe 10-15% of the Iridium handset price. You can't use it in Korea or Japan, but pretty much everywhere else is covered. This should be the first choice of business people who do not regularly visit Korea and Japan and conduct their work in urban areas with GSM coverage.
But here's the problem - Ericsson built these advanced phones on their tired 1996 platforms. Results: high weight in the worldphone, crude displays and old design solutions. It's a calculated gamble. Ericsson got first to the market and has a semi-monopoly until Nokia can hit back (Bosch has a 900/1900 phone, but it will get flattened by Ericsson's massive brand and advertising muscle). But as soon as Nokia delivers similar products based on the wildly popular -98 6100 platform, they will render Ericsson models pretty much obsolete. Was this rush to be first smart from Ericsson? Depends entirely on how fast Nokia can respond.
Got the first look on Qualcomm's long anticipated CDMA 800 digital/analog Q-phone. It's a stinkie. This is where limited R&D budget starts to bite. Standby time with standard battery: up to 20 hours. Nokia's digital/analog TDMA phone 6190 has 260 hours of standby time with standard battery - yet the 6190 actually weighs considerably less with standard battery! Notice how all comparisons are made with standard batteries. This is apples and apples.
I think CDMA is starting to run out of time with their stagnant development in handset technology. I can believe that standby times are not all-important - but when a more light-weight TDMA phone can offer 1'000% longer standby time we are talking about a serious technology gap. 20 hours is vastly disappointing, it's something Nokia offered in 1995. Apparently Qualcomm is treading water in their basic technological development projects. Moreover, Nokia's GSM and TDMA/analog phones are far more feature-rich, pack more numbers to their phonebooks, offer far superior talk-time, etc. Apparently you still can't send text messages with CDMA phones - very primitive. Nokia's new phones are retailing at 100 - 200 bucks; if Qualcomm is going to ask a premium price for a phone that underperforms models in competing standards by 90% it will be fascinating to see the consumer response.
There are already signs that the subscription growth of TDMA and GSM in USA is starting to beat the projections - ATT's One Rate Plan built on Nokia models is apparently a home run. In six months or so we should see how fast TDMA and GSM are growing in USA.
Tero |
