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Technology Stocks : LAST MILE TECHNOLOGIES - Let's Discuss Them Here -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: justone who wrote (8477)	9/14/2000 10:55:35 AM
From: justone	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 12823

Gartener's Dataquest Group issued the following press release today: biz.yahoo.com It notes that worldwide mobile phone sales are forecasted to be 98 million units in 2Q00, and they expect 420 million units by the end of 2000 for the year. I seem to recall (I've forgotten the reference) that there are ~900 million phone lines in the world, and wired magazine noted somewhere that there are about 470 Million cellular subscribers. If find this 420 million figure astonishing. If wireless is growing at 50% rate, we are probably replacing the handset something like every two years. I don't replace any other appliance at such a rate. They also note that "the mobile phone market looks increasingly similar to that of any other established consumer electronics product". If 420 million handset were sold this year alone, then wireless is rapidly overtaking wireline. Eventually, will they replace wireline? The only things slowing this trend is: 1. perceived lifeline problems with wireless 2. cost of wireless > wireline 3. traffic congestion The first two can be solved; that last addressed by new technology or reassigning spectrum. Three questions occur to me: 1. If handsets are a commodity, the carriers/vendors need to focus on differentiating services such as web over the handset. But will WAP take off? If SMS can offer the cream of the services today (voice mail notification, stocks, news, lottery), then will WAP generate a revenue to continue wireless growth. Probably the growth of wireless vendors is ensured due to the swap out of 2G for 3G equipment- handsets ditto, but not service providers. 2. When will saturation occur? Of course, with 6 Billion people in the world we have a long way to go, but the cream (high margin) growth is in developed countries and they must be approaching the 600 million figure. Does anyone have better market stats on cellular size? 3. A large part of the business case for broadband is to assume voice revenues for mult-line services: is this a valid assumption? Of course the demand for last mile services in video and data still mean DSL and cable and satellite will be funded, but if we assume only a 'second' line revenue (and even this is dubious since you can have several handset in a home making calls simultaneously), and perhaps the ILECs and cable SP's have a tougher road ahead, particularly in GSM countries.