Tero - Nice to hear the opposing viewpoint. But some comments:
Of course they make non-committal, neutral press releases - they can hardly name themselves "Friends of Ericsson". By appearing objective and unbiased they gain the kind of credibility they are going to need when they crack down on Qualcomm. I'd say they are fairly effective - their declaration has already been seen as a rebuke for Ericsson.
Unlike Gregg I do not view the press release as a sign of the death of W-CDMA. And, I concede that this group may put pressure on CDMA-2000, but as for the actual splitting there are really only two ways to interpret it: either it is an actual schism in the Ericsson camp, or it is a conspiracy concocted with Ericsson to make an apparently neutral camp which is really pro-W-CDMA. Either way the Ericsson camp is worried.
For God's sake, didn't you notice Qualcomm's stock price plunging immediately after the announcement and Ericsson's rebounding from their day's lows?
Without doubt Qualcomm has an image problem (Ericsson is very very good at what they do). Thus even a mildly ambiguous news release is likely to be interpreted as bad news for Qualcomm. The drop in price yesterday, if it has any meaning at all, is just a sign of Qualcomm's image.
In Qcom thread this has already been labeled as a move from a conspiracy trying to drive down Qcom price to make big purchases. Looking at the stock charts from the last two years I have to say that the conspiracy has been highly effective.
While generally not a participant in that new American pastime of inventing conspiracy theories, this is an exception to some degree. Most American conspiracy theories involve massive groups of otherwise unconnected people operating in concert and in secret, but in this case it involves only one very powerful company and one or two complicit (consciously or otherwise) analysts. There are numerous examples of that sort of thing happening in the past (didn't some ADM exec's recently go to jail for price fixing? I don't mean to imply that this is of the same magnitude legally, but from a management standpoint it isn't any more difficult.). From talking to some reliable sources it is almost without doubt that Ericsson has taken a very active, not passive, role in trying to make IS-95 fail.
Clark
PS A thought question - why is it that as time gets short we see a flurry of announcements from the W-CDMA camp, but none from IS-95 except as calmly worded retorts? I suspect that this is a subtle sign
of mild panic. I predict (going out on a limb here) that this will heighten next in the next two weeks (i.e. before the end of the year) with at least 4 different 3g announcements by companies and groups that are or were part of the W-CDMA camp. However there will be none by Qualcomm except as retorts to the former. |
