Wow, a full chapter out of Qualcomm Legends 101.
Endless negotiations with QUALCOMM on buying a licence for 3G.
Didn't I cover this already?
Long, long denial that they were using QUALCOMM technology in their vapourware.
Wasn't the IS/95 licensing agreement signed in '91? And the lawsuit was with Ericsson, wasn't it? With the lawsuit going on, why risk making some potentially self-destructive statements?
Years and years of 'developing' W-CDMA [keep in mind that they have, allegedly - Tero made such claims, been working on W-CDMA since 1993] whereas QUALCOMM, a rinky-dink little company was able to get field trials of CDMA up and running in a couple of years between 1989 and 1991 and handsets available a year or so after that.
DoCoMo set the timetable for the first launch, and they're doing it with NEC's handsets and equipment. Are you saying that DoCoMo and NEC don't want W-CDMA to be rolled out either? That's hard to believe.
They have excluded QUALCOMM [along with the other GSM Guild [GG] members] from the standards development.
What does this have to do with attempting to hold back W-CDMA?
They adopted a deliberately different chip rate for no good reason in an attempt to make it incompatible with other CDMA standards. They made other technological differences for no good reason and the 3G standards have now been made more harmonious under pressure from the service providers so that a handset can fit the necessary bits and pieces into one device.
Even if the higher chip rate was done for political rather than technological purposes (which I'm not sure of given the benefits of a higher chip rate), this has nothing to do with trying to delay W-CDMA.
There was a general action of common interest by the European politicians to exclude normal CDMA technology from Europe. The telecommunications trade-opening act was defied by politicians in Europe, requiring intervention by Charlene Barshefsky and the Clinton crowd to get them to open up as legally required.
So they're trying to lock out IS/95 CDMA. Rabid protectionism? Yes. Cowardly? Perhaps. But it's no different than the donations certain Qualcomm executives made to the Democratic party in an attempt to get them to push CDMA in foreign markets such is China. And all this has nothing to do with...
Nokia, Ericsson and other GSM Guilders would have been promoting exclusionary laws in Europe to protect their Berlin Wall economy. Nokia and other GSM Guilders charged 15% royalties for GSM which was extorquerationate - they whine about a mere 5% for QUALCOMM for brilliant technology but were happy to dun interlopers if they dared to compete in the GSM feeding-frenzy in Europe.
News flash: Sony, NEC, Panasonic, and Kenwood all sell GSM phones in Europe. Furthermore, in spite of the royalties, they're known as low-cost manufacturers. While I was in Europe last summer, I visited mobile phone shops in three different countries. In each case, the Japanese models were among the cheapest. Ironically, these same companies don't bother with the IS/95 CDMA market outside of Japan.
I asked:
<And more importantly, what is it that makes you think Nokia doesn't want W-CDMA to be deployed any time soon?>
You responded:
A 35% market share in GSM phones and 5% or so in CDMA phone sales is all you need to know.
Has it ever occurred to you that Nokia's low market share in CDMA is merely due to the fact that they've never put a lot of attention into this market? Their most advanced CDMA phone right now is from their 6100 line. That says enough. What if Nokia, whether by means of devoting greater resources to the cause, or by buying chips from Qualcomm, came out with a product like a 6285? Or an 8285? Those market share numbers would start changing quite rapidly.
But throw in a big market share in GSM infrastructure sales and you have a solid case that they would be nuts to allow development of VW-40 anytime soon if they can possibly slow it down.
So all those W-CDMA infrastructure contracts Nokia's signed, worth billions of dollars altogether, aren't legitimate? It appears that, when taking into account the TDMA and PDC moves to W-CDMA, Nokia's global infrastructure market share might very well increase thanks to W-CDMA. And of course, they don't get paid on all these contracts until W-CDMA gets rolled out.
Oh, but wait, they can also lead the GSM world into GPRS [because W-CDMA is delayed and dodgy so they should go GPRS first] and then, in another bite at the long-suffering subscriber, drag them over the Bleeding EDGE.
GPRS doesn't require new base station hardware, and thus can be implemented quickly across a carrier's entire network. Regardless of the circumstances, it'll take much longer for any technology that does require new base station hardware to be able to possess a similar amount of coverage area. As for EDGE, the market's spoken. Very few carriers appear to be in favor of adopting it, and thus Nokia, along with the rest of the industry, will act accordingly.
W-CDMA is hard, but QUALCOMM has done it and has produced an ASIC. Nokia, after 10 years of working on CDMA, can't get a competing ASIC even in 2G, let alone 3G.
How do you know that? Do you see Nokia issue a press release every time they've developed a new GSM baseband chipset or power amplifier for use in their handsets? Has Nokia made an official statement stating that they don't have a W-CDMA ASIC developed?
On another note, while you beam about how Qualcomm has announced a W-CDMA ASIC, you might want to remember that Infineon's done the same, and added GSM/GPRS functionality to boot. Of course, when I first brought this up, the chip was written off as vaporware by the Qvangelicals, even though it started sampling a few months ago. On the other hand, when Qualcomm announced a chip that still won't be sampling for another quarter, it was immediately declared as W-CDMA's saviour.
Maurice, you seem like a smart guy, and I think we both know along which lines this debate's headed from here. There's no need to go there for the 20th time. Thus, you can have the last word, should you want it.
Eric |
