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Technology Stocks : Qualcomm Moderated Thread - please read rules before posting -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: brational who wrote (20902)	3/29/2002 10:42:51 AM
From: Ramsey Su	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 197051

brational, while I agree with most your assessments, the path that I see is fundamentally different from yours. First and foremost, in my opinion, is the migration from a GSM world to a CDMA world. With only ~15% of the market today, the world has already agreed that 3G is going to be 100% CDMA. This is where the opportunity lies for QCOM. So in my simple minded approach, all we have to do is focus on the progress of this migration. Secondly, we need to measure the success of this migration in terms of penetration and usage to quantify the benefits to QCOM. There is one extremely important intermediate step to the CDMA world and that is the old 2.5G, or 1X vs GPRS/EDGE battle. Unlike WCDMA vs CDMA2000, which QCOM wins in either case, QCOM would not derive any revenue from GPRS. The long GPRS remains in existence, the slower the migration to all CDMA would be. So where are we now? Eric the dataman, posted a great set of statistics on the Nokia thread. Message 17253442 There is only one item missing amidst of all the numbers: subscribers. Without the subscriber numbers, one could easily be led to believe GPRS, like GSM, is once again the dominate technology of the day. In reality, we know that 1X has over 6 million subs around the end of Feb with the vast majority from ONE country, Korea. Now that is a successful launch. We all know the other 1X launches that are about to take place. GPRS, on the other hand, are already operating in 63 countries. 137 operations, 98 in service, had been promoting GPRS with 62 handsets. We know some of these launches are almost from a year ago. WHY WOULDN'T THEY RELEASE GPRS SUBSCRIBER NUMBERS? Now that is a good question for 3gamericas, gsmworld, MOT, nokia or anyone who might have the information. I suspect all of the above have the answer but reluctant to release for obvious reasons. Looking forward, what can GPRS do to change the picture? Not much. This failure is going to accelerate the migration to the all CDMA world. With this interim GPRS step being a failure, the GSM/GRPS/WCDMA path is now in question. Compounding the problem is the leader of WCDMA - Nokia, who purchased this lead position with vendor financing. Nokia is handset maker, their strength is not in the networks. Furthermore, Nokia has never installed a CDMA network anywhere (is that true?). The chances of Nokia delivering a working WCDMA network this year is practically nil. Within the next few months, we are going to see the results from Korea 1X evdo, VZ, KDDI .... that could shake up the grand scheme. On the side note, there are some recent articles about the battle of the lead in the wireless world, between US and Europe. Ironically, they forgot the world is more than US and Europe. As for the lead, Japan and Korea are battling for that position. For third place, US probably got that locked up. Battling for fourth is China and Europe (the countries there have to be combined to compete), with China most likely winning. Ramsey

To: brational who wrote (20902)	3/29/2002 2:34:55 PM
From: mightylakers	Respond to of 197051

BR, stop bashing Beijin University, that's where I came from<ggg> Ok, now to the point. I think the first mistake Unicom made is it rolled out CDMA too fast. The manufactures are not expecting Unicom to be aggressive as they are. Another thing we should all keep in mind is that right now Unicom are still in fact in the trial stage for the CDMA network. FWIW I think the second mistake Unicome made is it rolled out CDMA too slow. I'm not kidding, what I mean is it doesn't have the kind of features that can differentiate Unicom from China Mobile. SMS? Mobile has it with wider coverage. Voice quality? Well usually poor voice quality is not the top concern among Chinese. Besides the GSM voice quality there is not too bad since the coverage are better. Less Drop rate? Well Chinese are not using their cell phone for long calls. So that advantage is again not that apparent. What we need to see is Unicom to take advantage the next stage. How about BREW, how about QChat, how about high speed data(hello EV-DO). Without more features there's no way that you can convince the users that they are buying this so-called high end CDMA phone. The third mistake, which is not made by Unicom, is Chinese government. By forcing the domestic products only policy, the government is in fact starving out the phone supply for Unicom. Now the Chinese manufactures are dragging their feet knowing that they are safe even if they are late. On the other hand you have way too many manufactures watching each other. Me think the Government should put up a deadline or something, that is if you can't sampling your product by such such time then you are out of the game. The fourth mistake I think was made by the Chinese manufactures. For the one already have the phones out such as Hisense and TCL, they are charging way too high with a price $600-$700. Heck you can even buy a computer with that kind of price, and the phone is no different from other GSM phones. Yes the initial result out of China is no good, but we do have room to improve. With 1x in the play Unicom should be able to provide the kind of services separate itself from the rest of the pack. So let's see whether the parties involved can put their act together and really execute.