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To: Ramsey Su who wrote (12501)7/16/1998 8:59:00 PM
From: Maurice Winn  Respond to of 152472
 
"Did you forget the 500 word limit per post?"

Ooops!

But I'll quickly take the opportunity to add a few. I agree with you - cdmaOne is all about marketing now. Red, Blue, Baseball Bat or Tiki. Price per minute. Coverage. All that jazz. "Duh, I'll take the red one" will be more to the fore.

I think this is where Tero has lost the plot. He's still fighting the CDMAvsGSM Frezza wars, whereas Frezza left town a year ago, Ericsson is trying to get in the CDMA boat, Nokia is in and the race for market position is on.

He is rightly enamored of Nokia, which has done a brilliant job any way I look at it. They are bound to shift their technical excellence in handsets to cdmaOne and succeed there too. As long as they can use the cheap Estonia labor just over the border.

But they must make the shift. There is a danger that like Tero, they'll lay too much emphasis on GSM because they have had such wild success and miss the transition, which I think will be breathtaking, to cdmaOne and cdma2000.

The good part is that if they do successfully make the shift, Qualcomm wins. If they don't, Qualcomm wins. I'm sure they didn't sign up and develop ASICS over the last decade just for fun, so I bet they'll be there. But it seems that Qualcomm is ahead on the ASICS design with Nokia struggling already = they have only their own handset business whereas the other 25 licensees will buy The Q's. My guess anyway.

Mqurice

[I thought you'd be feeling queasy with the erlangs per guardband-decibel sectorization of link budgets]



To: Ramsey Su who wrote (12501)7/16/1998 9:27:00 PM
From: JMD  Read Replies (4) | Respond to of 152472
 
Ramsey, all other techno wizzes. I just listened to the Tellabs conference call. God almighty, those dudes just print money. So here goes. TLAB is buying CIEN. TLAB sees an "all optical network as the wave of the future". One tasseled loafer dared to ask: what about "optical CDMA". The TLAB boys clammed up as in "not ready for prime time", BUT there was an implication, body language is more like it, that some heavy stuff was gonna go down in this area. What means this? Surfer Mike



To: Ramsey Su who wrote (12501)7/16/1998 11:51:00 PM
From: Joe NYC  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 152472
 
Ramsey,

Something Strange about Nextel Report. How can a reasonably mature company report a quarterly loss higher than the total quarterly revenue, sales only a fraction of QCOM's sales, and Market Cap almost twice that of QCOM?

Oh well. You are right, they know about marketing. 400K new subs is impressive. Especially if you consider that they are selling half duplex walkie-talkie with questionable sound quality, and they are not selling them cheaply either (but still subsidized heavily). The per minute charges are I believe in 12c range.

One good thing to consider when deciding whom you want to sell your product to, is to consider how much the potential customer is willing to spend. Nextel goes after the business user. It is not a big deal for a company to spend $69 per month if the device is going to make the employee more productive.

In the meantime, Bell Atlantic and Sprint are resorting to luring teenagers with sub $20 per month offers. Why not go where the money is first, pay off expensive infrastructure, and then sell to teenagers with free evening/weekend offers.

Every new sub for Nextel is a lucrative opportunity lost for CDMA camp.

Of course Sprint and Bell Atlantic would argue that it is a higher priority for them to first build out and improve coverage before delivering custom services. I don't agree with that. I think they should do both.

If Nextel can raise money with credit-worthiness probably somewhere in the neighborhood of Iraq and Russia, why should it be a problem for Bell Atlantic to raise the money?

Joe



To: Ramsey Su who wrote (12501)7/17/1998 12:27:00 AM
From: Greg B.  Read Replies (3) | Respond to of 152472
 
Marketing types: all right, take some pot shots at these ideas attempting to build consumer awareness around CDMA.

It's tough, but there has got to be a way to connect with masses. Maybe new ad agency will produce some gems.

Anyway, here it goes:

- Brand CDMA similar to how THX is done in the movie theater. First, create ad to position CDMA faintly similar to THX, but must be cooler, so everyone understands what's going on and thinks "hey, that was clever." Follow up with two memorable scenarios (two separate ads) involving cell phone users. "Does your cell phone sound like CDMA?" The only phone with the clearest digital experience - but now you get to take it everywhere. (or is this deja vu?)

- [Key here is not to mention "digital" too much since it might be overplayed in the ads. This might come off better as a radio spot, so imagine listening to the most fitting personality. Gotta make words "CDMA" as ingrained as "10-10-321" It sounds cheesy (besides needing a lot more work), but Telecom USA is creating awareness with such an approach.]

Finally, CDMA is here with wireless calling that sounds as good or better than using a regular phone. If your cellular phone isn't using CDMA, then what are you waiting for? It beats all the over services hands-down in a national cell-phone survey. 90% said CDMA sounded as good or better than a regular phone! And 95% said CDMA sounded better than most other digital systems! But the good news is that CDMA doesn't cost as much as most other services. So now, there's no longer a reason to wait. Now you can start saving money. Trade up your old cell-phone with Bell Atlantic Mobile and use CDMA on the most advanced digital wireless network. Everybody's is doing it. So don't settle for less. Switch to CDMA and start saving today!

(Catch is - as soon as you can get out of your current calling plan. What can be done about that to induce the switch? Disclaimer: those statistics aren't based on a large sample size...)

- [Just as Apple has a spoof on Pentium, imagine a BAM spoof on Omnipoint. Just think what you can do with a parrot. O.K., so maybe it's not BAM's style, but it sure would be fun!]

I can't believe I just spent 2 hours doing this. Certainly makes you appreciate the marketing effort.

Regards,
Greg B.



To: Ramsey Su who wrote (12501)7/17/1998 11:35:00 PM
From: Ingenious  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 152472
 
Telephones are kinda like pizza...
Some cell phones are better, some cell phones are worse (ie non-CDMA) but ultimately, they are all pretty good (that is if you like pizza).
I suppose the point here (now that I have your attention) is cellular phones are not so much of a status symbol as they used to be. They are really becoming a comodity. So maybe your cell phone does not sound *great* but it works for most of your needs and above all it is really really *cheap*!!. That is a selling point for many people. Look at the Mac vs. PC; VHS vs. BETA; Newton vs. PalmPilot; Netscape vs. IE 4; etc. Cheap, simple, and easy *always* wins over expensive, complex, and sensitive equipment.

For CDMA to really compete, they need to install many more base stations and increase the subscriber list ot drive down costs. This only occurs with excellent *marketing* and not *engineering*.

Features on CDMA (is-95)like soft handoff etc. will not work properly if there are only a few base stations lurking out in the terra. People may not even get to experience those wonderful features of digital communication if the marketeers cant sell enough of the phones. Without marketing, engineering becomes just another experiment.