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

To: Mephisto who wrote (2793)	11/19/1999 7:45:00 PM
From: slacker711	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 34857

Since Nokia is a European company, I am not surprised that they concentrate on GSM products. I thought GSM was the European standard. Am I correct? You are right....GSM is the 2nd Generation European standard for digital phones. However the third generation European standard, which will likely go commercial in 2002, will be a form of CDMA (W-CDMA). I think that Nokia is in a position roughly analogous to Motorola during the mid 90's (I hope Tero doesnt pop a blood vessel). At this point Motorola was the dominant cell-phone maker. They were far and ahead of the competetition when it came to making analog cell-phones. Unfortunately they made a large mistake....even though analog cell-phones were still a large market (as late as '96/'97), they should have been concentrating on the next generation, which was digital(GSM/TDMA/CDMA). How different would the current telecom world look if Motorola had managed to come out with a tri-mode digital Startac in late '97 or early '98? That could have been the phone that was used in AT&T's One-Rate plan instead of the 61xx. The analogy isnt perfect....Nokia is supposed to be putting a large amount of resources into research in W-CDMA. However it seems logical to me that it would help their 3G development if they were more serious about putting out competitive products in the current form of CDMA. The issues are the same.....power control, soft-hand-off etc. It also doesnt help that Nokia never attempted to create a CDMA infrastructure division. Now I am not bearish on Nokia....but it does concern me when the largest cell-phone maker does not have competitive product in a standard which will eventually be used all over the world. Remember that Nokia will need 3G (and mobile data) to take off....it is the only way that the ASP's will stay high enough to allow their current profit margins. None of this is too late to change....If Nokia doesnt have the ability to make competitive CDMA phones they could still use Q's ASIC. They then could concentrate on what they have done best....marketing, design, styling and manufacturing. JMO..... Slacker