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

To: quartersawyer who wrote (58076)	1/2/2007 8:54:16 AM
From: slacker711	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 197462

it would speed up their transition to GSM. that seems over the top because there would seem to be real value to Reliance in expanding and evolving their CDMA network when 3G licensing and spectrum allocation is decided. Dual network strategies dont seem to work well for very long. Look here in the US....Sprint's support for a dual-network has been a disaster. Every iDEN customer can tell you that the iDEN network is having substantial problems around the country (even outside of rebanding markets). Most Sprint commercials seem to have changed to CDMA and I wonder how hard they push Nextel in stores that support both networks. I doubt it will be much different for Reliance. They are going to have to choose where to put their dollars and the new network will almost always get the top spot. If nothing else, management is going to need to justify the huge expenditures that they are going to make for the GSM network. 2G GSM/1x chipsets from Qualcomm -- with the voice-centric services nearly equivalent, were they priced for mass market before? Is it apples to apples, comparing <$50 GSM handsets to <$100 multiband, multimode handsets that can do DO, or are those just slideware. If Qualcomm's obsessively throwing money away on the idea as a false step toward real convergence, then that certainly sucks. Let's say you have a low-end GPRS camera phone from Nokia available in India for around $75. A 1x handset with equivalent functionality might cost $85. The exact same handset with 1xEV-DO might add another $10-$15 to the cost (and I think that is a low-estimate). How much more is a 1x/EV-DO/GSM version of this handset going to cost? It will be another premium (and likely much more than $10) since it has to support two RF chains (including extra PA), more powerful baseband (none of Q's announced value chip solutions are GSM/1x), and will be a substantially lower volume product. Now here's the real problem, what exactly does the GSM/1x/EV-DO handset offer for the consumer? Slightly better coverage and roaming....and not much else. If they want high-speed data, they can always get the DO handset for a discount, and if they want the cheapest solution the GPRS handset might be 40% less. JMO, but yes I do believe that any time/money that Qualcomm has spent on support for GSM/1x would have been better spent on their WCDMA chipset roadmap. Slacker