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

To: JeffreyHF who wrote (67599)	8/19/2007 9:02:55 PM
From: Eric L	Respond to of 197028

CDMA and WCDMA Common Industry Usage Hello Jeffrey, << Re: Declining CDMA market ... I guess that puts you in the flat earth camp that denies WCDMA requires CDMA. It must be 3GSM to accommodate that paradigm. >> To facilitate communications between me and thee in the future, if I type CDMA please be advised that I am referring to TIA standardized IS-95, IS-2000, or IS-856 access technologies through their various releases, and never lump WCDMA under that umbrella. If I refer to the direct spread FDD access mode of 3GSM UMTS (which are essentially synonymous and properly refer to the end to end platform including both the evolved GSM CN and the UTRAN) I'll put the requisite 'W' in front of CDMA. That shouldn't be too complicated for you since that's pretty much industry standard usage, although card carrying members of the Qualcommunist Party might (do) deviate. If I type WCDMA I could be including the CDM/TDM HSPA extensions, but at least occasionally I'll type WCDMA/HSPA for clarity. If I use cdma2000 I'm referring to the 3GPP2 2.5G and 3G CDMA standards -- yes, that's correct: I do not view R'0 (1xRTT as commercialized) as 3G anymore than I view GSM EDGE to be 3G -- through and including R'C & R'D (1xEV-DV) and excluding 1xEV-DO. If I type CDMA2000 (CDG's brand equivalent of GSMA's 3GSM), I'm including the various 1xEV-DO releases as well as 1xRTT. << I guess that puts you in the flat earth camp that denies WCDMA requires CDMA. >> Yes, the flat earth where GSM is relatively ubiquitous in all but the most sparsely populated areas. Geographically SATcomm could//should be viable one of these days because there are vast stretches of mountain, desert, and forest, where terrestrial mobile wireless telephony will never go. WCDMA and CDMA are both code division multiple access (cdma) implementations. Period. They are however two separate and distinct implementations of cdma, developed and they are standardized in two entirely different partnership projects since 1999 (and different SDO/SSOs earlier) and while there are many commonalities they have significantly different architectures and as many dissimilarities as similarities. << Declining CDMA market? By what definition? In absolute terms? >> Infra revenue (where it all starts) as a percentage of total infra revenue and in absolute terms. Handset unit sales share (and I assume revenue share) as a percentage of the total sell through. Estimates vary but mobile wireless CDMA handset unit share peaked in 2003/2004 at ~23%. It has since lost about 4 ppts of share. QUALCOMM is currently projecting minimal actual CDMA device unit growth (~10 million units) this year although they've recently upped their forecast which includes CDMA for WiLL by several million. Their estimate is probably conservative. Several sources are projecting mobile wireless CDMA to decline in actual terms and as a percentage of the total market next year and decline again the following year. That remains to be seen. GSM handset unit sales share peaked in 2005 at ~72%, up from ~64% in 2003. It declined to ~70% last year but actual growth in 2006 was between 100 million and 120 million units. Actual GSM unit growth this year will probably be ~50 million but it could surprise to the upside. Most are forecasting GSM actual growth to be flat to only very slightly up next year. That remains to be seen. With PDC and TDMA becoming virtually extinct WCDMA is of course leading in both percentage growth and actual mobile wireless handset growth. Actual growth will probably be in the 80m to 100 million units range this year, and probably at least 100 million units next year. Good news for those that lump WCDMA under the CDMA umbrella which is certainly useful for all of us when it comes time to project IPR revenue flow to QUALCOMM. Instead of CDMA, however, I prefer to type 'cdma' [CDMA + WCDMA] when breaking out sales by technology then lumping back CDMA and WCDMA. Cheers, - Eric -