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To: Percival 917 who wrote (4499)	8/1/1999 11:33:00 PM
From: Eric L	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

Joel, I said: << CDMA is not the dominant wireless technology today, nor am I convinced it will be tomorrow >> For the record and so I do not get stoned off the Qualcomm threads <g> (amongst the best threads on SI and certainly amongst my favorites) remember that I said it was certainly going to be the dominant air interface and that I was long "Q" and "Q" was one of my 2 core holdings. You asked: << I appreciate a contrarian view and I may have missed an earlier post of yours where you covered this, but would you care to expound on this in more detail? >> I have not made any significant posts where I've expounded on this in any detail although I've asked some questions to well informed posters on several wireless threads and engaged in a skirmish or two on the Qualcomm threads with people I respect very much. If you will give me a rain check, I will come back and respond in more detail on your question. Just finished 18 holes in rather hot weather and need to do a little business homework for a busy week but I will post back on this. - Eric -

To: Percival 917 who wrote (4499)	8/2/1999 2:16:00 PM
From: Eric L	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

Joel e al: If the following article I clipped from one of the Qualcomm threads (sorry no link) has already been posted here, I apologize but it is important to have background, IMO, on the "Holy Wars" when trying to determine just how dominant CDMA will be (as an end to end wireless technology as opposed to an air interface) v GSM - Eric - ======================================= << Jeff Vayda (thanks Phillips Telecom) First of a three-part series by John Sullivan The last year has been a remarkable one for the emerging third-generation (3G) wireless business. What started out looking like a repeat of the air interface "holy war" that rocked the PCS world a few years ago turned into something quite different. The struggle to shape the 3G market has spilled over into the arena of international trade and politics, and the initial customers for the technology - the world's wireless carriers - have rebelled and taken a greater role in determining what 3G technology looks like. How the secondary customers - the world's wireless users - will react, however, may well determine the fate of 3G, and their day is growing closer. Through much of 1998, the battle over 3G air interface standards was largely a repeat of the second-generation battle between GSM and CDMA, although complicated somewhat by the fact that both of the competing standards used code division. The CDMA world had cdma2000, while the GSM camp planned to evolve to something called wideband CDMA (W-CDMA). The two standards might have both been CDMA at heart, but some key details were very different. The reasons both sides trotted out to explain these differences were instructive. Chip Who? Although there were several technical parameters that differed between cdma2000 and W-CDMA, the most hotly contested was the chip rate, the speed at which the system's microprocessors were to operate. In order to maintain compatibility with the existing IS-95 standard, CDMA supporters said they needed a chip rate that was an even multiple of IS-95's 1.22 megachips per second (mcps). For cdma2000, the rate was 3.68 mcps. W-CDMA, on the other hand, used a rate of 4.096 mcps. Attempts to harmonize the two standards tended to get hung up on the chip rate. The GSM camp (and you can mostly read this as L.M. Ericsson AB [ERICY]) insisted that lowering the chip rate below 4.096 mcps would unacceptably degrade system performance. The worldwide carrier base didn't understand, Ericsson said, why their 3G systems should be hobbled with a lower chip rate simply to ease the migration path of a few North American carriers. On the other hand, the CDMA camp (and you can mostly read this as San Diego -based Qualcomm Inc. [QCOM]) insisted that the difference in chip rate would have little or no impact on system performance. CDMA carriers were the only ones coming from a code division-based 2G system, they said, so they were the only ones to whom chip rate really mattered. Since GSM systems would have to make a significant change to reach W-CDMA anyway, they argued, the only reason to insist on a chip rate incompatible with IS-95 was to impose a similar burden on CDMA carriers. A Pox On Both Your Houses That kind of competitive maneuvering tended to dominate the 3G debate through most of last year. Qualcomm insisted on harmonizing the two standards so that it would gain access to Europe and other GSM markets, while Ericsson tried to wall off its markets by keeping the standards separate. At the bottom of the whole mess were intellectual property rights. Qualcomm claimed it had patents that covered several key components of W-CDMA. Ericsson claimed that W-CDMA didn't infringe anybody's patents. More to the point, Qualcomm drew a line in the sand and told the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) that it would not license its patents for W-CDMA development without convergence. This upset the ITU greatly. The group was in the midst of culling through several air interface proposals for IMT-2000, its planned single global 3G standard. The ITU's rules demanded that the selected technology have unfettered patent access. If Qualcomm and Ericsson could not agree on the patent rights - and forced the whole issue into the courts where it might not be seen again for years - ITU threatened that it would be forced to drop both standards from consideration. (Part two of the series will appear in the Aug. 4 issue of PCS Week.) >>

To: Percival 917 who wrote (4499)	9/3/1999 12:28:00 AM
From: StockHawk	Respond to of 54805

CDMA market share - I don't think this has been posted here yet, but forgive me if it is redundant. The August issue of Telecommunications said "CDMA is now the top selling mobile handset technology in the United States with 35.4-percent market share, according to a recent study by Dataquest. TDMA technology was second with 30.9 percent." It continued "Dataquest also predicted a harbinger of change in a handset market traditionally dominated by the Big Three manufacturers (Ericsson, Motorola and Nokia). Powered by its market-leading share in CDMA, Qualcomm moved past Ericsson into the No. 2 spot during the first quarter in both digital market share and over-all market share." I traced the source back to a July 12 press release by Dataquest: gartner3.gartnerweb.com GartnerGroup's Dataquest Says CDMA Was Best-Selling Mobile Handset Technology in the U.S. During First Quarter 1999 San Jose, Calif., July 12, 1999?The U.S. mobile handset market has begun the transition to code-division multiple access (CDMA) and is becoming the dominant digital technology in the United States, according to Dataquest Inc., a unit of Gartner Group, Inc. (NYSE: IT). CDMA (IS-95) handsets were the No. 1 selling handsets in the United States during the first quarter of 1999 with sales of 3.2 million units, surpassing the more established time-division multiple access (TDMA) technology, which accounted for 2.8 million units in the first quarter. U.S. digital mobile handset sales totaled 7 million units in the first quarter of 1999. TDMA (IS-136) had been the No. 1 handset technology in 1998 with 8.2 million unit sales, followed by CDMA with 6.8 million units and Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) 1900 with 2.9 million units. Nokia continued to lead the U.S. digital handset market, reaching 32.4 percent market share in the first quarter of 1999 (see Table 1). Nokia was also the No. 1 vendor in the segment in 1998, when its market share was 34.5 percent. QUALCOMM was the No. 3 vendor in 1998, but the company moved into the No. 2 position in the first quarter of this year. Table 1 U.S. Digital Handset Market Share Estimates by Unit Sales for First Quarter 1999 Company Q1/99 Market Share (%) Nokia 32.4 QUALCOMM 14.8 Ericsson 12.7 Motorola 11.2 Audiovox 7.4 Total Market 100.0 Source: Dataquest (July 1999) "With the United States becoming a home market for CDMA, handset vendors that win here will have an advantage as the technology spreads to the Latin America and Asia/Pacific regions," Mr. Hoffman said. StockHawk