Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: Jim Mullens who wrote (687)	2/1/2004 6:02:05 PM
From: tinkershaw	Respond to of 2955

believe you are correct, the cost for GSM carriers to implement WCDMA will be significantly more than for the CDMA carrier’s path to 3G This does provide QCOM with both problems and opportunities. WCDMA deployment may be delayed in many places due to the cost whereas CDMA2000 and EV-DO may be installed earlier, as is happening in the U.S., creating the defacto standard that could then attract others to EV-DO and away from the WCDMA standard, particularly if the back office issues get resolved and standardized under EV-DO as they are with GSM and its upgrades. I know, wishful thinking in Europe, but then again Europe may very well find itself falling behind the U.S. in wireless technology if they don't start to do something about it. Quite the embarrasing and costly position to be in when they are use to bragging rights as the most unwired area of the world. On the problem side is the extra expense of W-CDMA will delay WCDMA installation and requisite royalties and chips that QCOM could otherwise sell. I'm certainly not a wireless executive, and I do not know exactly what benefit one would get with W-CDMA over following QCOM's lead, other than the chance to have more vendors selling chips (as the royalty is the same), but this decision seems to predominate and I think it mostly predominates due to the perception that as Europe goes (as they did with GSM) so goes the world standard. I don't know if this will necessarily be the case if W-CDMA in Europe does not start some major rollouts in the next 2 years and Verizon and KDDI and Korea prove to have an exceptional product that is not W-CDMA. More to ponder and I'm sure its more wishful thinking than anything, but the one thing that does concern me about QCOM is slow roll-out of W-CDMA because of the additional handset and upgrade expenses compared to just following QCOM's lead. Tinker