To: LindyBill who wrote (2643 ) 6/15/1999 5:54:00 PM From: mauser96 Respond to
LindyBill....Once you have a CDMA standard in use, switching to another standard is costly. However switching from a QCOM phone to a Nokia inside this standard is easy. QCOM makes the larger profit if you use a QCOM phone, but it still makes money (royalties) if you use a Nokia. A vendor can alter the CDMA they use but only to the extent that it still works with other CDMA phones. Since the whole idea of CDMA is to communicate with similar machines the functional modifications are limited. QCOM may have some advantage here since they have the most experience with CDMA. Once CDMA has become a standard, I think it no longer belongs to QCOM in the sense that they can do what they want with it.To make a simile, they originally designed the highway, but don't own the road itself,. Any changes in where are how the roads are built is up to a committee, but QCOM is in the unique position of being able to erect a toll booth on the road as well as use it.
