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

To: Dennis Roth who wrote (21123)	4/4/2002 12:52:43 PM
From: David E. Taylor	Respond to of 196634

Dennis: Expectations for demand in China fell after China Unicom Group last week said it had signed up only 650,000 CDMA subscribers in the first quarter. The company has said it expects 7 million by the end of the year, which analysts now say is unlikely. This has been a popular press and analyst refrain over the past few weeks. Perusing some of my archived stuff I came across this from back on 1/9/02 as Unicom announced the start of CDMA service: Message 16881581 An extract: China Unicom, which on Tuesday announced the commencement of its long-awaited nationwide CDMA service, has now scaled back the launch to trial status. Unicom will now run a three-month trial before attempting a large-scale commercial CDMA launch. "As this large-scale construction and implementation of China Unicom CDMA network using CDMA technology is the first in China, to better fulfill its commitment to the users, China Unicom will run a three-month trial on the CDMA network," the company said in a statement released yesterday afternoon. During the trial, Unicom will gather feedback from users on how to improve its network, services and terminals, the company added. And then these comments by IJ in an AFX News Asia article also on 1/9/02: Jacobs said the service may get off to a slow start because of China Unicom's caution in making sure the system is working properly, the availability of handsets, and the amount of marketing and subscriber support needed for the new technology. "I would guess that they will start a little slowly and then ramp very rapidly. He said Unicom's target of 7-8 mln subscribers in the first year was "ambitious, but a reasonable target. It will be interesting to see whether they go over or under." Chinese newspapers have reported that so far only four companies have CDMA mobile phones available on the market, and that China Unicom is only making 100,000 telephone numbers available over the next month, with another 400,000 being released by April. Based on this and simialr reports at the time, it sounds like Unicom is right on track, and writing off the CDMA service roll out as a failure seems a mite premature. David T.