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

To: gdichaz who wrote (3270)	1/14/2000 10:02:00 AM
From: tero kuittinen	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 34857

A couple of points: What on earth is this talk about cdma2000? Nokia got selected by NTT-DoCoMo as one of its prime W-CDMA development partners. Nokia got selected by the world's biggest CDMA operator (SK telecom) as its W-CDMA development partner. Nokia landed a W-CDMA development deal in China. Those GPRS deals that Maurice likes to badmouth - they are upgrade paths to W-CDMA. That's the point - Nokia's new GSM network gear has built-in slots for GPRS, EDGE and W-CDMA. You pop in a new module as they come out. Those GPRS customers Nokia won are going to be transferred to W-CDMA at some point. That's the point of Nokia's 40% market share in the GPRS market. These GSM operators that are the richest, most advanced, most ambitious operators in the world. Don't take my word for it - read their annual reports. They are ready to splurge on GPRS now and they may want to splurge on W-CDMA later. Either way, Nokia wins. And here we have a cheese & whine club about Nokia's CDMA shortcomings. So landing both NTT-DoCoMo and SK Telecom is chopped liver? I take those two operators as development partners over Sprint or BAM any day. Getting a foothold in China and snatching the huge operators in Spain, Taiwan, etc. in the GPRS-EDGE-W-CDMA upgrade bandwagon doesn't impress you people? Take a look at Motorola and Nortel and tell me whether you like their strategies better. If winning the GPRS battle is lame - what about losing it? How sad is that? To put the handset thing in perspective - there is a market for internet and WAP phones in Europe. And there isn't a market for internet and WAP phones in USA. That's how it is right now. Would you like Nokia to compete with Samsung in the "who can make the cheapest CDMA phone for Sprint" sweepstakes? Or would you like Nokia to compete in the "who can make the most popular 700 dollar WAP phone that will sell a million units in Italy alone" competition? I know that there will come a day when USA is an enormous market for internet phones. But right now, the high-end action is in Europe and Asia. It's in those markets where WAP is offered and there are consumers familiar with mobile data since 1995. Maurice - there are going to be 1 billion GSM subs by 2005. I don't know where you get your numbers, but TDMA's global subsrciber base was 7% and CDMA's was 10% for the most recent stats I have seen. Both grew by 22% year-on-year during the 3Q 1999 as far as I can tell. GSM hit 51% share and that share is rising every quarter. So if GSM has majority of the world's subscribers... and that share is rising... how do you think the GSM upgrade sales are going to look this year as WAP is offered in most markets? What do you think has driven Nokia's five consecutive quarters of handset market share gains? Sorry about So-Cal. Tero

To: gdichaz who wrote (3270)	1/14/2000 5:45:00 PM
From: Eric L	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 34857

Chaz, << on WAP, Nokia seems to be ahead of everyone not only in using its own WAP expertise but in getting WAP compliant phones out into the marketplace >> Back on topic which I think is Nokia, eh? <g> biz.yahoo.com >> NOKIA SAYS 2000 IS WAP'S YEAR By Roland Moller HELSINKI, Jan 13 (Reuters) - The world's biggest mobile phone maker, Nokia , said this year would see a breakthough for WAP phones -- mobile phones that give access to Internet services with the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP). Last year Nokia could not produce enough WAP phones to meet soaring demand, but the technology will really take off this year, Nokia Vice President of global product line management Soren Petersen told Reuters in an interview on Thursday. ''This year, the rubber hits the road,'' said Petersen, whose firm produced the first handset with WAP functions. This year will be 'steady' for the booming mobile phone industry, he added -- which means frantic growth. ''It's the fastest and most aggressively growing industry on this planet and I don't think this is going to change,'' he said. WAP technology gives mobile phone users access to the Internet and to services such as electronic mail and remote banking. Petersen declined to give details of last year's market growth or Nokia's market share because the group reports fourth quarter and full-year earnings on February 1. According to forecasts compiled by Reuters late last year, Nokia's 1999 group net sales are expected to have surged over 46 percent and earnings per share are seen up 41 percent. This year, forecasts put net sales up 30 percent and EPS up 22 percent, but Nokia said after the forecasts were compiled that its net sales growth this year would be 30 to 40 percent. In 1998, Nokia captured 23 percent of a market of 163 million phones sold, but its strong interim reports last year suggested an even larger market share. WAP PHONES TO FIGURE STRONGLY AT CEBIT Petersen said Nokia's first WAP phone, the 7110 model, had met huge demand which Nokia was unable to supply, although its production increase was going according to plan. He said consumers had to queue to get the phone because so many had been delivered to the WAP development community. ''We have had over 50,000 WAP development kit downloads on Nokia's site alone,'' he said. He said the increase in Nokia's output and the market entry of rivals' models would in a few weeks help supply meet demand, and added that he expected the leading GSM handset players to show their cards at the CeBit technology fair in Hanover in February. Nokia presented the 7110 at the CeBit fair last year, but did not start deliveries until six months later, at the end of September, instead of a planned second quarter launch. Petersen gave no figure for WAP phone deliveries so far, but said the 100,000-unit mark had been passed long ago. Strong growth in sales of mobile phones and other new digital equipment like personal digital assistants, digital cameras amd MP3 music players has caused a shortage of supply of some components like flash memory chips. Petersen said Nokia was doing well in getting the components it needed but declined to comment further. << - Eric -