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

To: A.L. Reagan who wrote (4166)	4/13/2000 9:32:00 PM
From: gdichaz	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 34857

AL: Chuckle. Both Tero (beloved here) and Maurice (beloved, well, perhaps, maybe, somewhere - in the hearts of the long long term Qualcomm investors - for those of us who remember well) might just possibly, be given to a bit of overstatement "to make a point". Not sure why that is Finnish or New Zealand or whatever, but it seems to be a fun characteristic. For those of us who look at the wireless world as best we can, a few things seem clear. Qualcomm is either in total, complete, charge of all repeat all systems beyond 2002, or it is not. And the question is, if not, why not? GSM has what economists call "sunk costs" but is Nokia "sunk"? What seems clear to anyone who is awake is that Asia is the future in telecom. And the Asian manufactures will eat Nokia's lunch, breakfast, and dinner if Nokia keeps fumbling CDMA. Done. Best to all. Chaz

To: A.L. Reagan who wrote (4166)	4/14/2000 1:48:00 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 34857

AL, Let me explain. I agree that was a pile of metaphors mixing faster than acronyms in the WWeb world. Network effects are vital, as most people now know. Japan really did change cdmaOne so the forward and reverse links were reversed. They do seem to like to be different, for the sake of it. [Sake as in lake, not sake as in larkey]. That difference means that only Japanese handset makers can sell CDMA handsets in Japan unless somebody wants to go to the trouble of making the specialized handsets they need. Everyone [other than Japanese companies] is too busy making normal cdmaOne handsets and getting 3G ready to mess around with Japan's style. So Japan now has to make multimode handsets for export and for Japanese to go roaming onto those weird foreign networks. That will NOT be good for them in the long run. The importance of worldwide network effects will overcome the advantage of the localized home turf specialization. The hot little mammal was just in reference to Rex and NTT, both presumed to be super-powerful because of size. Rex went under [in my theory] to the hot little mammals with brains and constant energy. Brains beating brawn! I was not referring to Kyocera, or Nokia as the hot little mammal [or the Japanese]. We could say the hot little mammal in this context is the onset of worldwide 3G with dominant network effect. Sure, two modes [or three] might run in parallel for a while, but it seems likely to me that only one will happen. I don't believe that the extra cost, size and inefficiency of having multilingual handsets will be justified. Though Irwin said it would be okay [because the modes are quite close to each other]. Network effects are powerful. With heaps of people using GSM messaging here, it will be doubtful that Telecom NZ Ltd will get a huge rush of excited customers when they bring in CDMA next year. People won't want to be out of the loop with their GSM SMS buddies! That networking effect is very powerful. There will need to be big cost savings or other benefits to get people to switch. My point was that DoCoMo is likely to miss out on network effects and end up in a blind technological alley with their selection of W-CDMA [if it's a very different kind from cdma2000]. They are also likely to have to wait far too long to get a working W-CDMA system [fast working, not struggling along at 64kbps or something]. My point about the alpha males was that Motorola, Ericy and Nokia have all played King of the Castle. I suspect Kyocera or Samsung will take over [since Nokia has struggled so much with CDMA despite a very early entry]. In general, one should be very careful [and not do it] when moving from a generalisation to a particular case. So, although NTT is taking the old Japanese road of protection and stuff, Kyocera has not. Kyocera signed up for CDMA long ago. They bought QUALCOMM's handset business. They are positioned to become the King of the Castle. Nokia had better hurry! Not all Japanese companies adopt the old-style MITI approach. The generalisation is still true but that does not mean there are big variations. I bet that's really clear now! Meanwhile, I should point out, some of my best friends are Japanese! Japanese should be treated as human too, along with women. However, Saddam Hussein should not [though most Iraqis are fine]. Jiang Zemin should not either, since he threatens to blow up Taiwan and one of his generals thought a neutron bomb would do the trick - I'm pretty sure that was the suggestion. See? Chinese should be treated as human, in the general sense, but that doesn't mean that Jiang should be. Ramsey Su tries hard and he could have honorary human status. Ramsey is actually British, but escaped, wallet intact, from Hong Kong before they all became Chinese again, and became a Yank and since Yanks are sometimes human, he gets in on that ticket. I have honorary sheep status [they being very important and too threatening to the USA to be allowed in, even dead, though human-type NZers are okay, as aliens]. Okay, this is getting silly... Mq PS: No, "Human-type NZers" is NOT an oxymoron.