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To: Rajala who wrote (91306)	1/5/2001 10:50:19 AM
From: limtex	Respond to of 152472

Rajala - GPRS is still way behind its commercial take-off, even the phones are not out yet en masse. EDGE is in the distant future Well that seems to be entirely consistent with QCOMs often repeated satements on htese issues. On the other hand there is a full feature 3G system in operation today in Korea. This 1X system provides full duplex at 144Kbps and is due to be upgraded to something around 154Kbps later in the year and is now being deployed across Korea but it started in their major cities. The system is about to be deployed in Japan and will be in the US after the Summer. Best regards, L

To: Rajala who wrote (91306)	1/7/2001 2:15:54 PM
From: EJhonsa	Respond to of 152472

However, there is no admission. They are confident that they will reach an agreement sometime in the future. There is no hurry. Alcatel and Siemens seem to be sitting on their hands also. What are all these guys waiting for? What you have to keep in mind here is that, if W-CDMA/GPRS/GSM tri-modes become the world's most popular handsets in a few years, as is likely, the royalty fees that they'll pay are going to amount to a significant amount of money for the likes of Nokia, Siemens, and Alcatel. To the extent that every 1/10 of a percentage point will matter a lot. As you may know, the first W-CDMA commercial trials are slated to take place by BT (Isle of Man) and DoCoMo this spring. Here, NEC's expected to provide all of the handsets, and quite possibly all of the base stations. Thus, they're the only ones who have to have a license within the next few months...and they have (http://www.qualcomm.com/cda/pr/view/0,1800,439,00.html), with the deal requiring royalties equal to what they were paid for cdmaOne. The others have until August/September, the point at which the Spanish government's mandated W-CDMA spectrum licensees to have commercial trials up and running. The circuit switched WAP has not been a commercial success yet. GPRS is still way behind its commercial take-off, even the phones are not out yet en masse. EDGE is in the distant future. I don't expect circuit-switched WAP to ever be an earth-shattering commercial success, at least not in its current form; but when you combine always-on GPRS with larger screens and pen/touch interfaces, all within handsets that weigh less than 150g, the dynamics change completely. The release of such phones in the near future will drastically change the perceptions consumers have of their phones. This, in turn, should sow the seeds for the popularity of 3G handsets, replete with multimedia capabilities, to take flight by 2003 or so (assuming that there aren't any significant delays). As for EDGE, as I said earlier, with W-CDMA set to come on the market at roughly the same time, I'm still doutful as to how much uptake it'll see on the part of carriers. It reminds me a lot of HSCSD. So is it only a waiting game? If so, why? Is there an expectancy of current or future leverage i.e. is Q´s IPR position on WCDMA not unassailable? Sorry, but I have to laugh here. First, I have trouble seeing how these companies would intentionally delay GPRS, considering that Qualcomm doesn't get paid for the sale of GPRS handsets. Second, I seriously doubt that a 4-5% royalty would matter so much to these companies that they'd intentionally delay the rollout of next-generation data services, given how such services will provide them with the ability to greatly boost the ASPs they get for their handset sales. Lastly, given how many companies have signed up for W-CDMA licenses (http://www.qualcomm.com/cda/pr/view/0,1565,443,00.html), and the long list of Qualcomm patents cited in the PDF file that I linked in my last post, any debate regarding whether Qualcomm's W-CDMA IPR position is unassailable is now superfluous. On the other hand, the question of how fast 3G rollouts will take place, and how receptive consumers will be to 3G services, is definitely up for debate, with convincing arguments capable of being made for both sides. Eric