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Technology Stocks : Nokia (NOK) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tero kuittinen who wrote (2064)	9/8/1999 6:03:00 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 34857

In an odd way, digital tv has replaced the old standards, but not in the way they thought - my eyes are filled by this digital screen I'm watching right now. It's my news source and all sorts. That just shows how wrong they were; not only did digital tv not take over, tv of any broadcast type will be lucky to survive at all! But that doesn't mean 3G won't happen and fast. You aren't quite right to say the cost issue hasn't been addressed. Yes it has. Quite some time ago I figured that paying by bits with high prices for peak times and really cheap for quiet times would see 3G a very economic system [but not for watching streaming video like a couch potato]. Airtouch has realized they'll have to drop the per minute business and go with data flows and peak pricing. Wireline Web is building the base for WWeb. Those wired users will be primed to switch when functionality and cost meet their expectations. The USA has inhibited cellphone use by their absurd 'called party pays' policy. They might do something equally stupid to stop the adoption of 3G. I doubt it but you never know. Maybe Congress will put a per minute toll gate on the Web and WWeb, require all packets to be filtered through the NSA and FBI and any encrypted stuff be decrypted. Given their wealth, even with fragmented standards, you'd think the USA would be the biggest user of cellphones. The CDMA trend is Qualcomm's friend. Qualcomm will make ASICs, royalties, handsets/devices, including Globalstar. There are about 26 CDMA subscriber licensees. Shared equally, they get only 4% CDMA market share each! Tough to increase that by 1% let alone in the overall cellphone market. The whole handset business is going to be extremely competitive [well, it already is but that will increase]. So if you consider the total cellphone market of all types, there are heaps of handset makers who will be well under 3% market share since Nokia, Motorola, Ericy have such huge shares as a result of analogue, GSM and TDMA handsets. I'm not sure what you thought I'd say, but I guess it was that Qualcomm would do okay? I suppose their CDMA handset market share should drop over the next year to well under 10%. I'd be pleasantly surprised if it doesn't. That means Q! overall cellphone market share will be even lower, at under 4%. That does sound low, but whatever it is, it will still be a big increase in sales over this year. I agree with you that the boring details will be vital to profit in the end. Qualcomm will need to be highly competitive in the prosaic as well as the innovative to be successful. Resting on laurels is fatal. Sure, having a range of products is good, leveraging on brand image, offices, staff, accounting costs and so on is good. But focus can be even better. Does Ferrari make SUV's? Michael Jordan tried baseball but returned to basketball. Rolls Royce did not make a people's car. 2004 will see well over 10m 3G subscribers. You are wrong; there are guarantees. I am offering a double your money back guarantee. Send Q to my email address! Maurice

To: tero kuittinen who wrote (2064)	9/8/1999 9:36:00 AM
From: slacker711	Respond to of 34857

The most common mistake people make with Motorola and Nokia is to assume that CDMA is some kind of Magic Kingdom where different laws apply. In reality, economies of scale apply to displays, antenna technology, battery technology, etc. across the spectrum of TDMA, GSM and CDMA. I think that most people would agree with this statement....but remember the converse is true too. How many CDMA ASIC's did Nokia ship last quarter? I would estimate somewhere around 1m versus 11m for Qualcomm. I think that as Qualcomm comes out with successive generations of ASIC's that the pressure will continue to be on Nokia to begin using the Q's ASIC's. The fixed costs for development are the same but it is much easier when you are spreading these costs across a variety of customers (same argument you have with Nokia's 61xx platform). Perhaps the customer doesnt care about the RF specs of the phone but the carriers definitely do. Witness the fact that neither PrimeCo nor BAM have given approval to the CDMA version of the 61xx. The funniest part is that these companies should have been the primary customers for this phone since PrimeCo operates 1900MHz and it's parents (Airtouch and BAM) operate 800MHz. They could have offered nationwide roaming for much cheaper. Personally I have a tough time understanding why Nokia continues to attempt to create their own ASIC. I would think that it would be in their best interests to simply use the latest generation of Q's ASIC. They could leverage their brand, manufacturing ability, and all of the other things you mentioned to sell CDMA phones worldwide. Slacker