The proof of the pudding is in the eating, as those wacky Brits always say. The fact that the European digital phone sales and subscription growth rates are far higher than in USA shows that the single standard strategy has great appeal with consumers. It does not matter whether a European country has 51% market penetration (Finland) or 12% market penetration (France) - the handset sales growth is far healthier than in USA (40% in Finland, 120% in France).
The benefits of economies of scale are obvious. With 100 million GSM subscribers worldwide, companies can afford to develop and market dozens of products, even those with limited customer potential. There are three different smartphone solutions already in the market (Nokia, Philips, Alcatel). And I mean *now*, not next June. There is infrared link as a standard feature in half a dozen models. There are phones with 10 hour talk time (Siemens). There are GSM phones that function in USA, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia. There are several models under 100 grams. Models with 10 days of standby time. Anything and everything a consumer might desire.
Etc, etc, etc. CDMA handsets are woefully underdeveloped in comparison. The consumers suffer a serious lack of variety as a result. This together with bad roaming is stunting the growth of mobile phone sales in USA, projected to be just 27% currently (The Economist). If you want to dispute the fact that Europe is growing much faster than USA, please give me a reference in some current major newspaper. I'm not taking the word of some Qcom fan over The Economist.
The new Q-phone is cruelly exposing the technological stagnancy of CDMA phone market. How can they put out a new phone near 1999 with just 20 hour standby time and a weight of nearly 170 grams? People would be rioting on the streets in Europe if some company would try to visit this abomination unto them. These are the specs of an Ericsson GSM phone in 1995. It's a rule of thumb that a model has to be on sale for at least two years to turn a profit. Can anyone see a consumer buying a hefty phone with 20 hour standby in the summer of year 2000? Qualcomm may be selling everything they make right now. But they are also digging their own grave for -99 by not making technological progress. And believe me, with their current specs the sales can't keep up. How will they replace all the current models within 12 months? They can't expect to be selling these underpowered bricks into next millennium.
CDMA phones have currently a built-in audience. So many major operators are pushing CDMA so hard that phones are sold no matter how inferior they are. However, this will not last. Consumers will make comparisons. And those CDMA networks launched in places like Hong Kong, Australia and Mexico will also have to compete directly with GSM. There is no way the technological lead of GSM handsets is going to be overcome. In 1996 people in this thread were saying that CDMA handsets will catch up if you just give them some time. In fact, the reverse has taken place, the GSM handsets have pulled even farther ahead.
In December Ericsson will launch a major ad campaign for their GSM 900/1900 phones, usable on every continent. Nokia will follow next year. The huge market of GSM phones has funded the R&D effort into phones incorporating GSM 900/1800/1900, TDMA and AMPS into one handset. This development will ultimately render CDMA phones obsolete. The CDMA handsets are so difficult to produce that all companies making them are consistently running into delays and turning out products with inferior specs. You cannot incorporate CDMA into a worldphone if you cannot even produce a decent handset with only CDMA and analog functions. The enormous R&D budgets of Nokia and Ericsson are now harnessed to unifying GSM/TDMA/analog phones. The first such Ericsson phone with *five* standards weighs just *140* grams. And apparently Qualcomm can't even pack only CDMA into that weight!
The unified GSM market in Europe produced the amazing technological advances now enjoyed by people in 100 GSM countries. It is now enabling the birth of GSM/TDMA/analog superphones. And this is supposed to be an inferior approach compared to the four standard muddle in USA? Who's gonna make CDMA/TDMA/GSM worldphones? Motorola? Tell me another one. Europe is the leading overseas travel destination of US tourists and businessmen. No land-based worldphone is possible without GSM. As soon as Ericsson and Nokia are both offering worldphones and waging a titanic ad war, the appeal of CDMA will be seriously undermined. That will happen in about six months. Mene, mene, tekel ubarsin... the hand is already writing on the wall.
Tero
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