To: Gregg Powers who wrote (17594 ) 11/3/1998 4:55:00 PM From: tero kuittinen Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 152472
I know I should stop, but I'll do just one more posting. Isn't the fact that the Koreans are showing interest in W-CDMA at all strange? Wouldn't it be in their best interests to support CDMA2000 with its compatibility with IS-95? Their investment in W-CDMA is proof that all is not well in Qcomland. Koreans are balking at the idea of being tied to yet another demanding IPR deal with Qualcomm. Nokia and Ericsson are asking only moderate licensing fees from Nortel, Koreans, etc. That's the attraction - an open standard that will not benefit any single company inordinately. Now that Nortel is building a W-CDMA network and collaborating with the Japanese in W-CDMA handsets Lucent is the only friend Qualcomm has left. All other major mobile telecom firms are doing W-CDMA. Some are keeping their options open towards CDMA200 as well, that is true. I believe in consensus building and large standards that are backed by majority of industry players. Alienating Motorola, being very hostile tom ETSI, getting into scraps with Koreans who were the key allies of Qualcomm, etc shows a very confrontational tendency. You wouldn't believe how much bad blood there is towards Qualcomm at the moment in Europe. You say that's just jealousy, I say it's a dangerous backlash building to some unforeseen conclusion. Nevertheless I'd like to congratulate Qcom fans for the coming great quarterly result. It's an indication of the potential of this company. It would hurt me more than you know to see that promise squashed like a cockroach. Yes, Motorola is after market share and not profit. That won't hurt the competition any less. In GSM they haven't been able to undercut Nokia because the quality gap has been too big. In CDMA, the Startac specs are something to worry about. If they get a lock on foreign CDMA market (for which Mot is well positioned) they will become profitable even with low retail prices - some of the Startac components are already shared by millions of units. In any case the danger for Qcom handset division will become obvious only later in 1999. Good luck in the meantime. Tero