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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: gdichaz who wrote (44539)	7/17/2001 9:29:45 PM
From: Eric L	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

Cha2, re: Wireless Data Tornado Formation (China) << Your introductory definition of the relevant tornado and the discussion of it is very helpful. Yes, that is what I am looking for also. >> Like you I sense that (am convinced that) there will be a wireless data (and voice) tornado. I do not yet know exactly what metrics we need to apply to measure it. Subscriber growth in and of itself is not sufficient, of that I am convinced. Voice only communications will be masked within subscriber figures. << But unless I missed it, there is a remarkable blind spot in looking. CDMA One and/or CDMA 2000 1x, 1xEV-DO, 1xEV-DV seems to be invisible (except for a brief mention in connection with WAP). Suggest with CDMA coming along strong in Asia that is a major oversight. >> To me that was one of the strengths I noted in the article when I first clipped it a few weeks back, and when I first looked at the tables and forecasts, I sort of scratched my head since many of then referred to "3G", and "3G" is a ways off in China. It is a little early to sort out what generation or flavor of CDMA, of GSM, or 3GSM, will contribute to the tornado (and they all will). In that respect the article was a welcome respite from the Holy Wars. It painted a bigger picture of wireless data, and did not bog down in the underlying technology. Several of the tables were interesting to me in the larger sense. Obviously Asia will play a major role in the upcoming tornado, both on the carrier side, and on the vendor side. In many cases they will not do it alone. M&A will continue on the carrier side. European carriers have an increasing Asian presence. Asian Carriers will have an increasing presence in Europe and the Americas. European and US vendors are seeking alliances with Asians and vice versa. Global strategies of carriers and vendors are changing and will continue to change. New partnerships will form. I am convinced the tornado will be somewhat global in nature, and will shape up more or less concurrently in Asia, Europe and North America. When I first read the article I had just read another article published by a highly credible UK source (EMC) and it presented something of a paradox. The EMC research article projected that in China "Analysts predict that 90% of new users will be prepaid": Message 15959662 Now prepaid and data are not mutually exclusive, But most people tend to associate prepaid with voice communications, or voice and simple text messaging, and generally with low APRU customers, and low priced (relatively non-sophisticated) mobile phones or devices. The potential paradox I see relates to the table that shows the "Top 10 3G Mobile Operators At the End of 2005". The table shows approximately 450 million subs that are the customers of the (combined networks of) the top 10 global carriers using wireless data. Of these 450 million subs, 205 million (46% of the subs controlled by the top 10 carriers) are forecasted (by this Asian publication) to be the customers of 3 networks in China. This relates back to your point about lack of specificity of technology. If there is "uncertainty" about this anywhere, it certainly has to be China. GSM, GPRS and cdmaOne are in play, and eventually all 3 modes of 3G3, but in the meantime, 3G licensing is further out than it is in many regions of the world. It also relates to my comment: The term "3G" seems to be used somewhat loosey goosey just like it is in the article text. For the most part "3G" seems to be used for mobile messaging to some degree, but primarily for mobile Internet access, regardless if the underlying technology is 3G, 2.5G, or 2G. << Any idea who "Telecom Worldwide China Inform Communication Ltd." is? >> Yes. "Telecom Worldwide" is one of several bilingual (Chinese and English) trade publications published by "China Inform Communication Ltd." out of Hong Kong. Other than in a relative sense, I have to little experience with them to give a lot of validity to their forecasts, and the article didn't state the source of the forecasts ... ... and forecasts are crystal ball gazing, particularly out over more than 2 years, and particularly when paradigm shifts are occurring. - Eric -