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To: 49thMIMOMander who wrote (18938)	3/14/2002 3:39:50 PM
From: JohnG	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 34857

Ducks. Keep Crying. Seeing a little horn tooting on this side of the pond. Is it a gentle wave or a huge tidal wave. Rhonda Wickham Wireless Review, Mar 1, 2002 It's time for some good, old-fashioned American ass-whuppin'. From Day 1, European subscribers compulsively clung to their cell phones and wildly ran through talk-time minutes. That drove wireless voice penetration rates across the continent to dizzying heights. Those levels set the bar for the rest of the world — which meant U.S. subscribers were labeled as laggards. That was their first mistake. As wireless data applications begin to bulk up carrier portfolios, wireless watchers wonder about take rates for mobile data. Will they mirror wireless voice's hockey stick pattern for Europe, or the spineless mini-Nike swoosh for the U.S.? A few of our drinking buddies across the pond don't think so. U.K.-based consulting firm Ovum insists wireless data penetration will be another in this nation's long list of rags-to-riches stories, with U.S. rates zooming from a currently lackluster 10% to nearly 62% in five years — and outpacing the rest of the world by more than 10%. Ovum analysts also predict North America will be responsible for $14.7 billion in wireless data revenues — nearly one-quarter of the total global revenue. So how is that possible when the U.S. has no i-mode or SMS heritage from which to draw? The same up-from-your-bootstraps moxie that got us to Plymouth Rock, that's how. “Europe's explosive growth has already gone through,” said Robin Hearn, wireless analyst for Ovum. Also, European rates are layered with low-end penetration and prepaid users, which U.S. carriers don't have. The U.S. market is in a position to exploit its CDMA 1X technology to push the wireless data market along, Hearn said. Carriers like Sprint PCS and Verizon Wireless have “fairly national coverage” that can benefit from faster data speeds and better services without having to shell out as much as the Europeans did for GPRS. So what are we waiting for? Of all the carriers in these here United States, so far only Verizon Wireless has launched an initial CDMA 1X footprint. Said Hearn: “It's time for the U.S. to stand up and say, ‘Hey, we're not this backwater anymore — we have CDMA 1X.’” Just one more reason to call America the New World. industryclick.com.

To: 49thMIMOMander who wrote (18938)	3/14/2002 3:40:48 PM
From: Eric L	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 34857

re: Samsung & Symbian maybe >> Samsung Adds Symbian Software To Its Range Mar 14, 2001 Lucas van Grinsven HANOVER, Germany Reuters Samsung Electronics, the world's fastest growing cellphone maker, said on Thursday it would add Symbian to its software partners and plans to expand into low-cost cellphones. The South-Korean TVs to phones manufacturer is the last of the world's top five handset makers to adopt the software of Symbian, a British company that has been set up as counterweight to Microsoft and is financially supported by three of the top five phone producers. Microsoft is trying to expand from the stagnant personal computer market, where its software can be found on 90 percent of all PCs, into the rapidly growing mobile phone market. Cellphones increasingly offer services which can also be found on computers, such as email and messaging. Although Samsung was warmly welcomed into the fold by Symbian, the South Korean company told Reuters it regards Symbian as only one of three main software platforms for advanced mobile phones that can handle email, calendars and play audio and video. Samsung will continue to work with Microsoft software to develop similar "smart" phones. It already has a handheld computer with a built-in phone that runs software from the third main software vendor in this arena, U.S.-based Palm. "We're putting our chips on multiple players. Our current strategy is to target all three platforms. But eventually the market will center around one of them, and we will support whichever platform that is," Eric Kim, Samsung's global marketing director told Reuters in an interview on the fringes of the CeBIT technology fair in the German city of Hanover. Shares in Britain's Psion, which owns 28.1 percent of Symbian stock while Motorola, Nokia (news - web sites) and Sony Ericsson (news - web sites) each hold 21 percent, jumped over four percent after the Samsung news. But the shares retreated as investors digested Psion's poor results, published Thursday, and the stock fell 4.4 percent. Big Catch Samsung was Microsoft's big catch when it announced the Korean company's support for its Smartphone software in 2001. But despite Samsung's line-up of eight new phones for the European market which were announced at CeBIT on Wednesday, the most extensive product launch of any cellphone maker here, there was still no mention of a Microsoft product. Microsoft's vice president in charge of telecoms activities, Pieter Knook, told Reuters that Microsoft had decided not to wait for a big brand manufacturer like Samsung to come out with products based on its software. Microsoft now focused on ready-to-go reference designs it has developed with chip makers such as Intel and Texas Instruments. These designs allow any wireless operator to order smartphones from any contract electronics maker. He said that Deutsche Telekom would shortly follow the example of British-based wireless operator mm02 and come out with a Microsoft-based PDA phone, built by a contract manufacturer in Taiwan. Kim declined to say when his company would launch Microsoft products, nor did he say when he expected Symbian phones. A mass market of tens of millions of Symbian-enabled phones was not expected this year, Symbian's Chief Financial Officer Thomas Chambers told Reuters here. He acknowledged the take-off of its software has been slower than planned, but added all of its handset making investors were developing Symbian products. Symbian is working with operators and software developers to kickstart services, Chambers said. Low-End Phones Kim meanwhile said that Samsung, which has carved out a 7.9 percent global market share in 2001, up from 5.0 percent a year earlier by selling very expensive and sophisticated cellphones, will move into cheaper, low-end phones. The low-end segment makes up some 70 percent of the total cellphone market. Samsung, which aspires to become a global market leader, needs cheap models as well as expensive ones. "As a newcomer we have focused on mid and high-end phones. We don't have the existing brand strength like Nokia. Our strategy is therefore to bring premium phones that gives us brand credibility. As we achieve that, we probably want to extend that position to a broader market," Kim said. << - Eric -