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Technology Stocks : Nokia Corp. (NOK) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Eric L who wrote (2219)	4/21/2002 12:00:14 PM
From: Eric L	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9255

re: Rod Nelson of AWS on the GPRS Rollout & Upgrade to EDGE * GSM/GPRS was deployed in markets representing 45 percent of AWS pops by the end of last year. * Customers in 10 states covering more than 30 major cities can now receive GSM/GPRS voice and high-speed data services. * GPRS providing data speeds on the order of 25-30 Kbps for handsets * GPRS providing data speeds on the order of 35-40 Kbps for PDAs and laptops equipped with wireless modems. * Data compression services can boost the perceived speed of common Internet applications running on PDAs and laptops by a factor of three or more. * Advanced technology, such as frequency hopping, will allow the GSM network to carry more calls than TDMA for given spectrum. * The GSM platform will offer further substantial gains in capacity with Adaptive Multirate Vocoder technology. * With AMR and frequency hopping scheduled to be deployed later this year, calculations from our labs and vendors show the voice capacity of GSM with AMR is on par with any competing technology. * In the third quarter over two dozen GPRS data enabled devices will be available. * If EDGE devices are built to specifications similar to GPRS, customers could expect average data speeds to be three times that of GPRS. * "why EDGE" - AT&T Wireless will receive faster speeds with essentially a software upgrade, using the same spectrum as GPRS, for a very small percentage of the overall cost of moving from GPRS to UMTS. * The next point of focus is linking the network with GSM carriers in other parts of the world through international roaming agreements -- giving customers a seamless connection for their wireless voice and data services. AWS expectations for speed and capacity here: Message 17332362 >> AT&T Wireless Keeps GSM/GPRS Rolling Rod Nelson, EVP & CTO AT&T Wireless Reprinted from Global Mobile March 13, 2002 3gamericas.org When AT&T Wireless first announced plans in October 2000 to overlay its next generation GSM/GPRS wireless network on top of its TDMA footprint, it was viewed as a monumental task by analysts, customers, media - and even our employees. Most were skeptical. Three questions kept arising: - Can they do it on schedule? - Can they do it cost effectively? - Can they market service to customers? The simple answers are yes, yes and yes. GSM/GPRS was deployed in markets representing 45 percent of our pops by the end of last year, eclipsing our goal of 40 percent - and we did it on budget! Additionally, customers in 10 states covering more than 30 major cities can now receive GSM/GPRS voice and high-speed data services. The network rollout last year provided some initial challenges. - Would we be able to co-locate TDMA and GPRS sites as we expected? - Would GPRS work as expected? - Would our support systems be able to manage the new network? The answer to these and other questions became clear when we turned on Seattle last July as our first market. Now, with nine months of experience behind us, we've become old pros at turning up the network in new markets. Nine Month Report Card The experience gained in 2001 shows that we can deploy the equipment, GPRS will work as expected and our support systems can be deployed. We are now more confident than ever about the rollout and the performance of our new network platform. Advanced technology, such as frequency hopping, will allow the GSM network to carry more calls than TDMA for given spectrum. The GSM platform will offer further substantial gains in capacity with Adaptive Multirate Vocoder technology. With AMR and frequency hopping scheduled to be deployed later this year, calculations from our labs and vendors show the voice capacity of GSM with AMR is on par with any competing technology. GPRS is also performing according to expectations. We're seeing GPRS providing data speeds on the order of 25-30 Kbps for handsets and 35-40 Kbps for PDAs and laptops equipped with wireless modems. We also offer data compression services which can boost the perceived speed of common Internet applications running on PDAs and laptops by a factor of three or more. We expect to deliver this same consistency when we boost GPRS speeds with E-GPRS or EDGE. If EDGE devices are built to specifications similar to GPRS, customers could expect average data speeds to be three times that of GPRS. And for those of you wondering, "why EDGE," here are a few noteworthy items to jot down. AT&T Wireless will receive faster speeds with essentially a software upgrade, using the same spectrum as GPRS, for a very small percentage of the overall cost of moving from GPRS to UMTS. More Devices…Please One concern we had centered on the availability of devices. The network was operating as expected but customers were not given much choice of handsets or other devices. While we knew this would be a short-term issue, it gave our critics room for skepticism. For example, many industry commentators believed the upgrade from cdmaOne to cdma2000 would be simpler, offer higher data speeds, and offer a broader range of devices than our 3G path. Yet Verizon Wireless's Express Network that launched in January - which uses 1xRTT and is available in 20% of its network -- is available on just one handset and one modem card, and offers data speeds of 40-60 Kbps, according to Verizon. GPRS seems to be very competitive in terms of choice of devices, data speeds and network coverage. In addition, GPRS is more widely available in the United States, as AT&T Wireless, Voicestream and Cingular have deployed GPRS. Since launching Seattle with a single handset, customers can now choose from several GSM/GPRS phones from Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola, and laptop/PDA mobile connections. More devices and services for both consumers and businesses are making their way to market. Additionally, more non-traditional devices, or "hybrids" - a cross between phone and PDA, such as the TREO or Blackberry - will soon be available. In the third quarter we estimate that over two dozen GPRS data enabled devices will be available. We expect GSM/GPRS to really take later this year as our network coverage grows, additional services are launched and more devices become available. Companies such as Handspring and RIM are developing hybrids for GPRS before any other wireless technology because of its global scale. Where to Next? AT&T Wireless' GSM/GPRS network continues to grow and perform and our vendors are delivering both infrastructure and devices. More than 75 percent of world's wireless subscribers are served by GSM, and GPRS is being widely deployed by wireless carriers throughout Europe. The next point of focus is linking our network with GSM carriers in other parts of the world through international roaming agreements -- giving customers a seamless connection for their wireless voice and data services. While AT&T Wireless already has roaming agreements with several GSM/GPRS carriers serving North America and parts of Europe, our goal is to broaden these agreements to truly have our customers receive all the benefits of the GSM/GPRS global standard. << - Eric -

To: Eric L who wrote (2219)	4/21/2002 12:28:35 PM
From: Eric L	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9255

re: Globe and Mail on Nokia Q2 >> Nokia Raises A Warning Flag By Mathew Ingram Globe and Mail April 19, 2002 Great expectations. That's the wall, or hurdle, that confronts the market at the moment. Investors have more or less gotten accustomed to the fact that many companies are going to be reporting weaker sales and earnings this quarter — but they are filled with optimism about what will come after that, since fears of an economic meltdown have proven to be groundless. But are expectations still out of whack with reality? Perhaps. In other words, there's still room for periodic jolts to the system, like the one Nokia handed the market on Thursday. Although IBM helped out by coming up with better-than-expected results for the first quarter, the Finnish cellphone giant served warning that there is still plenty of room for disappointment - like the helping Microsoft handed out after the market closed, revising its forecasts for the current quarter downward. As usual, the issue is not so much whether a company makes its estimates for the most recent quarter, but what comes after that. By now, companies have guided analysts' expectations downward to the point where if they miss their latest quarter, something has gone seriously wrong. It's all about the next quarter, and the quarter after that — and that's where some estimates may be out of line with reality, as Nokia's were. The company met Wall Street earnings forecasts for the quarter, with a profit of $767-million (U.S.) or 863 million euros, although that was down from a profit of $866-million in the same quarter of the previous year, and revenues fell by 12 per cent over the year-ago period. Still, the market had accepted all of that long before this quarterly report came out — the big issue was what Nokia said about the rest of this year. A few months ago, the cellphone maker and networking equipment company said that it saw revenue rising by 15 per cent this year, with sales of about 430 million handsets. Now, the company said that it is hoping for revenue growth of between 4 per cent and 9 per cent for the year — in other words, it has cut its expectations more or less in half. It also cut its forecast for handset sales by about 20 million for the year. No wonder the stock tanked by more than 10 per cent after the news was released. With the lower handset number, Nokia was effectively saying that it sees no growth in that market for the year. So how does it arrive at a sales forecast for its phone unit of 5 per cent to 10 per cent growth? Good question. Presumably, it's planning to increase market share — although that's more difficult than just growing with a growing market. Nokia already controls over 35 per cent of the world market for cellphone handsets. Earlier this year, there were some analysts who thought Nokia was being too bullish on the phone sector. Morgan Stanley Dean Witter even downgraded the stock to "underperform," cutting its target to $13 when the shares were $22.50 (they're now $18.16). And yet, just last month Nokia stuck to its forecast of a revenue drop of 6 per cent to 10 per cent, and profit of 13 cents to 15 cents. It missed both of those by a fairly wide margin. Nokia fans said Thursday the company was merely reducing its expectations so that it could outperform those forecasts later on — a view which borders on the Pollyanna department, particularly in a volatile industry such as telecom. Others said that the reduced targets were either evidence that the company's grip on the market is slipping, or a sign that it is misjudging its markets to the point where its forecasts simply couldn't be trusted any more. Neither of those is a particularly nice thought. Admittedly, Nokia was probably more aggressive than most in its forecasts, since it is widely acknowledged as the market leader in cellphones, far ahead of Motorola or Ericsson, and it is also a tremendously efficient company — probably the only thing that allowed it to make its earnings forecasts. But how many other companies are there that have made similar mistakes, assuming a turnaround too quickly, and how many investors have decided to do the same, giving them the benefit of the doubt? That's not to say there haven't been positive signs for some companies: Food behemoth McDonald's not only beat Wall Street earnings expectations, but boosted its estimates for the year at the same time. But then there was also Advanced Micro Devices, the microprocessor maker that competes with chip giant Intel. The company reported a smaller loss than most analysts had forecast, but said it still faces a tough market for the rest of the year. And even software titan Microsoft cut its forecasts for the current quarter, although it boosted them for the full year. "The majority of companies are coming out with shaky news. One day they say they see signs of a turnaround, then they say, 'We were premature,'" strategist Al Mirman of V Finance in Florida told Associated Press. In other words, we're not quite out of the woods yet. << - Eric -