Hi Everyone..WARNING! Very long post..
I do not benefit VODABAMs increase in coverage
I hope that's not true.
I just bought my very first cell phone a few weeks ago, a QCP 860 Thin. Paid a whopping 249$ for the phone itself to ride BAM rather than go with Sprint since my usage will be mostly regional and I am afraid of those analog roaming charges. For 39.99$ I get 200 minutes anywhere within the NorthEast, Maine to Northern Virginia, the Carolinas and N. Georgia. 59.99$ buys 500min. No roaming , analog or dig unless I leave this footprint. The VOD/ATI/BAM alliance should make this type of plan available nationally. Sprint is going to be significantly disadvantaged IMO if this alliance really gets it's act together because Sprint has no analog default network. I think they're gonna have to spend a lot of money to keep up. In addition, at this point BAM is behind SPrint on data rollout. Hopefully this alliance will spur them on. So I personally expect to benefit from this alliance.
I'm also hoping that this alliance will create greater impetus behind what I believe must be an ongoing effort by Q and Ericsson to create a GSM/CDMA chipset solution. As we know Vodaphone carries the biggest pro harmonization stick. This alliance guarantees that they very badly need GSM/CDMA roaming. Once such a solution is on the market all this GSM/CDMA footprint talk becomes less relevant. You'll be able to sign up with whomever you want and talk wherever you go, although I suspect data might be a different story. The idea of putting up a CDMA network in the middle of GSM land will become "thinkable".
I'm not one of those who thinks ATT will be switching to CDMA, doing an overlay, anytime soon. Armstrong seems to be able to raise capital at the blink of an eye. They'll milk this GSM/TDMA convergence for all they can get and they'll just keep spending more money to stay in the game, good for the equipment providers but not Q in particular. It's got to be more than a full time job just to follow the fund flows at a behemoth like T. They've got legacy equipment across all market segments. The place is a sinkhole.
If anyone is going to do any CDMA overlays VOD is probably the best candidate given their close relationship to Q and the fact that they operate both GSM and CDMA networks. Someone correct me if I'm wrong but hasn't Ericsson been Vod's largest infrastructure supplier? Now that Ericsson sits squarely in the middle of all standards maybe they'll be the ones to do the job. Don't hold your breath though.
And what's happened to 3G? We haven't heard a peep in quite a while. NTT DOCOMO? Somewhere I read a post that they're going to move ahead with their network, standards be damned, they'll just retrofit things to comply. Sounds expensive doesn't it? Of course DDI and IDO merging won't hurt Q either will it.
Daimler Aerospace in G*, Toyota at DDI/IDO, Hyundai in the CDMA handset game...hmmmmmm
So I've been using this ThinPhone around NYC for a few weeks now. It's amazing how clear some converstations are, especially on the mobile end. But my wife who's often on the other, at home/landline complains that many calls where I hear perfectly sound garbled to her. And many calls sound bad on my end AND on the other end, especially mobile to mobile. I've even had calls dropped while I was standing still and the other person is on landline though it's true it was raining. All this must sound pretty familiar to the rest of you. We're still a long way from reliable landline quality. Fortunately these problems should actually be less of an impediment for simple data services than voice, but video and audio?
And if BAM is the best CDMA in NYC, and if CDMA is state of the art, then what are the other networks like? Maybe they're not really that much worse after all. I was at a construction site yesterday where of course everyone was using the often maligned Nextel. Those guys were getting calls in the middle of the building where I couldn't and these were NOT direct connect local radio calls. Of course I'm sure we could go to some other site where I'd get the calls and they wouldn't.
Anyway I'm somewhat taken aback at how often the calls sound pretty bad. Of course the industry is responsible for my expectations of digital clarity. When one steps back to think about what's really going on however, the complexity of the network, the complexity of the NYC skyscape and density of users, the fact that these things work at all is really quite remarkable.
OTOH the ThinPhone itself is really nice. It's extremely light and as someone noted the other day it really does fit very comfortably into a shirt pocket. It operates very intuitively, I spent no more than a few minutes learning to do the common everyday things like storing numbers, running through menus, changing settings etc. And despite what Tero says I like the way it looks, especially the "oversized" flattened earpiece.
If it has a downside it's definitely the internal battery. I never get 80hrs standby out of it. On a day like yesterday where I spent a good part of the day at the fringes of reception, the phone consumes extra power searching for a signal.When I got home after 10 hrs one bar of battery power remained and I had only talked on the phone for a few minutes. I also still think the lack of vibrating ringer is a failing but all in all it's a very nice product.
Which brings me to the handset division sale. It's great that Q really has a nicely designed, reputable product on the market at a time when they're selling. The division would have fetched far less last year I'm sure. Those large phones really are bricks.
We might learn quite a bit about the state of ASIC competition when we find out who the buyer is. Not that I'm expecting anything in particular but a buy by either the rumoured MOT or the wildcard Nokia would be a very strong testament to Q's ASIC lead. Capitulation by either of these players would be quite remarkable, especially when one considers the Ericsson relationship.
Short of such spectacular outcomes the lessons we can learn will probably be more ambiguous. If MOT and Nokia pass then we can assume they feel fairly confident that their internal programs are competitive. Maybe a European company really would make the most sense for Q. They've already got many big Asian partners, why bolster one at the expense of the rest?
Clearly, not all outcomes are created equal. If MOT and NOK are both successful with internal programs Q IS going to face margin/earnigs pressure, no question about it. The only highly profitable business left aide from royalties are ASICs, leaving aside Otracs, Cinecomm etc for now.
The fact that margin pressure was so severe raises lots of serious questions. Most of them have already been aired but here they are from my POV. If MOT's and Nokia's ASIC projects are as impaired as has been claimed, how is it that they are nonethelss able to force Q's margins down to the point where Q was forced to abandon ship, or put another way, why is it that Q's royalty and ASIC advantage was not enough to keep them in the game? How could things have changed so rapidly, over a period of just a couple of months? Why should we presume that the same won't happen with ASICs, in other words, will we wake up one day to "devastating" competition from DSP, LU, whomever? Will Q ever really make any money? Looks like we're again going to be treated with pro forma income, writedowns, etc. When is this stuff going to stop?
It's funny but I've managed to stay long this whole time despite serious misgivings about all sorts of things the whole way. I was worried for a long time that Q's handset operation didn't make sense because of the obvious conflict of interest it represented, because I felt that the big guys were just too damned big, because Q wasn't doing the things that would've been required to win at the game like boosting capacity rapidly enough, and because I felt they weren't showing great consumer oriented design prowess. At this point, although I really am dazed by the sudden bout face, I'm pleased that they decided to make a quick exit of it. I'm not ready for more big writedowns.
All this stuff was easier to sort through when Gregg was a regular poster, when Q was a lot "cheaper". I wasn't even aware of what was going on over at YHOO. I've spent hours reading through all those posts over there. Wish I could say it was worth it. I'll feel more secure when those damned 3G standards are finally promulgated. It's going to be very difficult for us little guys who don't work in the industry to get a hold on ASIC competition. All we'll get are BTB ratios which change very fast.
Loooooong post almost finished.
Ramsey.. Get off your high horse! I haven't learned a f&*%*&g thing from one of your posts in a long long time. You're no better than the rest of us. Why don't you try to come up with a more productive way to stimulate a useful discussion..
DMG |
