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

To: tradeyourstocks who wrote (4805)	5/13/2000 8:41:00 AM
From: tero kuittinen	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 34857

I wouldn't underestimate the Japanese companies in the 3G market. It's clear that DoCoMo has designed the entire W-CDMA project at least partially to benefit NEC, Toshiba, Matsushita and Hitachi - whether they outsource the chipsets or not. If they do, it's other Japanese companies they use. The whole second generation PDC project was essentially an attempt to keep the entire digital phone manufacturing base in Japanese hands. It was succesful in a way - it didn't become an international standard, but it kept foreign companies locked out of Japan almost completely. It seems that the Japanese companies have a headstart in W-CDMA phones right now. It's not clear how much good that will do them internationally - early models outside Japan will have to be GSM/W-CDMA dual-mode phones. But Toshiba, NEC and Hitachi are not a joke in the 3G market. Both Alcatel and Siemens have essentially admitted that they can't pull off the 3G development project on their own - they have now Japanese partners. These Japanese firms got serious about W-CDMA years ago - at the time when most vendors were still against W-CDMA. We don't know what that headstart means until we start seeing the products. And actually - Nokia's W-CDMA development is not based in San Diego. It's based in Tampere, just like it was in 1996. You may have relevant information about the discontent among Nokia's IS-95 development people. But I wouldn't mix that up with the 3G R&D. These are two separate issues. It's not necessarily bad that this thread has changed from being a QCOM thred into being an IDC thread... it might be even an improvement. But there is something very American in focusing on litigation, lawsuits and submarine patents. That seems to be a big theme in telecom investing now; let's find a company that gets IPR income and hope they win their lawsuits against manufacturers. It's the same "Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire?" attitude that drives Geoworks. I'm not saying it's a bad strategy if you get it right. But it can be pretty painful if you end up being Darva. Tero