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Digital TV Cell Phone Test Drive
Video Program :: New Tech & Services
Posted on Friday, May 27 @ 17:20:00 JST
By Gail Nakada, 27 May 2005
http://www.wirelesswatch.jp/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1348
Digital terrestrial broadcasting for mobile phones is scheduled to begin in Japan by spring 2006 and both Vodafone and KDDI had demonstration models up and running on the first day of the NHK Science and Technical Research Laboratories open house yesterday. An annual event open to the public, this year's show focused once again on digital TV broadcasting with three floors of cameras, servers, receivers and handheld devices. Mobile receivers drew packed crowds herded into Disneyland-style long lines waiting their turn to handle an 801SH Vodafone/Sharp CDMA Qualcomm handset. No bigger than a conventional cell phone, the 801SH has a hybrid split-screen displaying images on the upper half with the bottom reserved for scrolling data feeds and Web links to programming, etc. Exclusive from Wireless Watch Japan!
100 Million Strong
Industry Eyes LBS Tipping Point
May 1, 2005
By: Alan Cameron
GPS World
http://www.gpsworld.com/gpsworld/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=163592
The announcement in March that "more than 100 million handsets enabled by Qualcomm's gpsOne technology are in commercial use" raised a few eyebrows in the GPS community. That 100-million figure, if substantiated, would jump the total number of GPS receivers worldwide, both standalone and integrated, well above any other previously stated estimate. Educated guesswork constitutes the only way of arriving at a total market volume, as many privately held GPS manufacturers do not release production figures. The Qualcomm claim would make "the gpsOne solution the most widely deployed GPS technology," and the San Diego, California-based wireless communications company the largest GPS provider in the world.
More importantly for the industry as a whole, the presence of 100 million GPS-enabled mobile phones in the marketplace could finally prompt the long-stalled launch of location-based services (LBS). This could in turn firmly embed GPS in both consumer and business daily processes as, truly, "the next utility" — and explode the marketplace.
The March 14–16 Cellular Telephone Industry Association (CTIA) Wireless show in New Orleans, the stage chosen for Qualcomm's announcement, furnished several other indicators of LBS imminence.
NAVTEQ, a digital mapmaker from Chicago, Illinois, hosted its second Global LBS Challenge competition, encouraging application developers to craft new services to entice both wireless carriers and consumers to take the plunge. With co-sponsors Microsoft, Telcontar, SiRF Technology, and ESRI, NAVTEQ handed out six $10,000 cash awards, a $50,000 grand prize, and assorted technology licenses. The stimuli drew interest, with the number of entries up more than four-fold over last year's Challenge.
Bones in Motion won NAVTEQs Global LBS Challenge with an application that monitors time, speed, and calories burned during physical activity, and displays maps of both routes to be followed and routes accomplished.
The Nextel-Sprint merger, announced December 15, 2004, and due to take effect in the second half of 2005 pending federal agency review, will bring together as one entity the two wireless carriers with the best LBS credentials. Reston, Virginia-based Nextel has heretofore focused on the business market, and included among its wireless offerings several navigation, location, and tracking services, over Java- and GPS-enabled phones from Motorola. Sprint, out of Overland Park, Kansas, was the first consumer-focused carrier to announce it would implement a handset-based assisted GPS solution to comply with the Federal Communications Commission E911 mandate. Although neither company made an LBS-related statement at CTIA, industry participants widely expect to see a large-scale consumer LBS offering from one or more carriers by Q4 2005.
At least one consortium of companies floated a concept that would work around rather than through the wireless carriers, whom some have characterized as conservative and slow to respond to location service opportunities. Digital mapmaker Tele Atlas, manufacturer Socket Communications, and service provider gate5 put forth their joint smart2go product, a GPS-driven bundle to navigation-enable personal digital assistants (PDAs) and smartphones. Consumers can buy the retail product and pay their wireless carrier for the air-time to download data, without having to wait for their carrier to implement an LBS offering of their own. The device incorporates a u-blox GPS chipset.
Handsets and Carriers
Rob Roveta, senior director of product management for Qualcomm CDMA Technologies (QCT), the company's chipset division, stands by the 100 million figure, adding that the company actually counts conservatively, to ensure that it can meet investor requests for certification. He points out that these are not GPS receivers per se, but chipsets integrating GPS functionality along with other features such as modem, multimedia, and ringtone capabilities.
QCT is embedding GPS across its product line, for all air interfaces, GSM now as well as CDMA. Its chipsets have location-enabled 150 phone models from 20 manufacturers. Slightly more than 50 percent of these handsets are in the hands of North and South American consumers, with just under 50 percent in the Asia/Pacific market.
Carriers have had success with LBS offerings, in Japan, where Roveta says KDDI used them to take away subscribers from rival carrier NTT DoCoMo, and in Korea, where they have generated millions of dollars in revenue. A recent launch by carrier Vivo in Brazil sold half a million GPS-enabled phones in the first three months.
Roveta thinks the turning point for LBS worldwide services has arrived. "We're putting the technology in place for the applications." Qualcomm also offers its Location Server to wireless carriers through its partners Hewlett-Packard, NEC, and TCS.
"Impetus behind LBS applications work has been building for some time. The mistake early on was that the marketing folks got ahead of themselves with the notion of one or two killer LBS apps that would justify the market. I think a set of smaller, more targeted niche apps will get the market going." He points to Nextel's success with a bundle of small applications in its enterprise offering.
"We are now working more closely with LBS application providers to bring more targeted and more specific applications to the North American and European markets." Qualcomm's Internet Services division has also made LBS a priority, with its QPoint product line for operators interested in offering location-based services, and its binary runtime environment for wireless (BREW), a platform that affords developers easy access to different chip features — audio, video, graphics, and GPS.
Global LBS Challenge
NAVTEQ and its partners have meanwhile also encouraged developers to craft location-based applications. "If it's mobile, it's going to be location-aware. No doubt about it," asserts George Filley, vice president and general manager of NAVTEQ's Consumer Business Unit. "It's a completely horizontal market, not vertical at all. Don't throw them content, throw them an eco-system" — meaning an environment of varied LBS applications. "This is not a well-defined niche market." However, the grand winner in the LBS Challenge at CTIA, and category winner for asset tracking/field services, exemplifies the targeted niche market appeal cited by Roveta as key to LBS success.
Bones in Motion monitors and measures physical activity in fitness programs. It records time, distance, speed, location, and calories burned while engaging in outdoor activities. Users can view activity summary, maps (street/topographical/satellite), and speed/elevation charts on their GPS-enabled phones, upload results to a personal online journal, and download maps of routes where other users have run, cycled, or walked — for example, when visiting a new city.
Bones in Motion received $60,000 in cash and $175,000 worth of NAVTEQ map licenses. Other category winners, who garnered $10,000 cash and $75,000 worth of map licenses each:
in personal security, Clarity Communication Systems Inc. for Whereabouts, a child/teen tracking service for parents;
in peer-to-peer/find me, LOC-AID Technologies for helping users locate friends, children, family members, or nearby points of interest, and to share their own location with designated peers;
in navigation/POI look-up/traffic, InfoGation Corporation for Adeona, giving real-time traffic, weather and gas-price information, and nearby points of interest;
in commerce/advertising/buying/billing, Smarter Agent, acquiring user location from the phone and delivering data such as sale prices, comps, taxes, and houses for sale and recently sold in the vicinity;
in gaming/location-based imaging, Networks In Motion, Inc. for PhotoFinder, enabling users to manage photos containing location tags, view them on a map, and send to another phone or website with navigation to the spot where the picture was taken.
Show the Money
Will the consumer pay to play? That's the key point still to prove out. Rob Consolazio, senior director of wireless data services for Nextel, had one marketing suggestion. "Don't call it 'LBS' — the consumer doesn't get that." His candidate? A better known concept in the marketplace: " 'GPS' gets you a little closer."
Dick, you are welcome. I hope that IJ's words on Wi-Fi/WiMax would help.
ZTE Unveils Europe’s First CDMA-based Digital Trunking Network in Oslo
http://www.wi-fitechnology.com/displayarticle2142.html
-/May 27, 2005 - Wi-Fi Technology News/-ZTE Corporation (Shenzhen: 000063, Hong Kong: 0763), China’s largest listed telecommunications manufacturer and leading wireless solutions provider, today unveiled Europe’s first CDMA-based digital trunking network in Oslo, Norway.
The network, built for NMT (Nordisk Mobiltelefon AB), is one of the pioneering technologies for Norway’s broadband mobile public services, special enterprises and professional subscribers. The network is based on ZTE’s GoTa (global open trunking architecture) technology, the world’s first CDMA-based trunking technology.
The network will cover the whole of Norway and phase I of the project is scheduled to be completed by June this year. A variety of services, including voice, high-speed data, professional trunking, and value-added services such as location, video monitoring, streaming media, cell broadcast and VOD, will be available to customers in Norway via the new network.
The network follows a successful demonstration of ZTE’s GoTa technology last year and the signing of a contract with NMT in December 2004.
“The demonstration of our technology last year received high praise from the Norwegian government,” said Fang Rong, Vice President of ZTE’s International Division. “The GoTa system’s feature-rich services, high spectrum efficiency and high data rate were particularly noted.
“ZTE is extremely proud of its position as a leading supplier of CDMA and its development of GoTa – the world’s first CDMA-based digital trunking mobile communications system – and we are very pleased to be bringing this technology to Europe.”
As a 3G-based technology, GoTa offers significant advantages over traditional 2G-based trunking systems, offering high-speed data services, smooth migration to all-IP, low installation costs and high-quality voice services.
The unveiling of the network today coincides with the first of a series of CDMA seminars hosted by the Corporation. The seminar, which will be followed by similar events in Indonesia, Algeria, Brazil, will feature demonstrations by ZTE and partner organisations, live ‘case study’ experiences from customers in Russia and China, and live equipment demonstrations.
ZTE offers a full CDMA portfolio, from network products to service platforms, service applications and terminals, all of which are in use around the world. ZTE’s GoTa system has been successfully deployed in more than 15 countries, including China, India, Indonesia and Brazil, and has become one of the world’s major digital trunking technologies.
About ZTE:
ZTE Corporation is China's largest listed telecommunications equipment manufacturer and wireless solutions provider specialising in offering customised network solutions for telecom carriers worldwide. The company develops and manufactures telecommunications equipment for fixed, mobile, data and optical networks, intelligent networks and next generation networks as well as mobile phones. For more information please visit http://www.zte.com.cn.
China to provide 3G mobile telecom services before 2008
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2005-05-27 19:02
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-05/27/content_446404.htm
Third-generation (3G) mobile telecommunications technology will begin to serve in China, the world's largest mobile telecom market, before 2008, according an official from the Ministry of Information Industry (MII).
Qiao Yunshan, head of the MII's telecom product and system division, made the announcement at a high-tech exposition in Beijing, which opened Monday and concluded Friday.
Qiao said that his ministry has established a 1.21-billion-yuan (145.8 million US dollars) special fund to boost the development of the mobile telecom sector in China. Thanks to the fund's support, many Chinese telecom enterprises have started research and development in 3G cellphone technology, and some of them have completed tests on their 3G products, Qiao added.
Last year, business turnover in China's mobile telecom sector rose by 28 times compared with 1998.
MII data show that there are now 349 million subscribers to mobile telecom services in China, the most in the world. The total includes 319 million subscribers to GSM (global system for mobile telecommunications), and 30 million to CDMA (code division of multiple access) system.
Wireless App Fever
Nikhil Hutheesing, 06.06.05
http://www.forbes.com/global/2005/0606/050.html
Handhelds will soon replace PCs as the primary Web appliance of the digital age. Get ready for the investment boom in wireless applications.
Remember the excitement over 3G, the so-called third-generation wireless networks? These were touted as the way consumers and businesses could surf the Web and send data at broadband speeds from anywhere a cell phone worked. After billions of dollars in investment and a decade of discussion, delay and disappointment, 3G networks have finally arrived in the U.S. Such networks are already operating in Europe and Japan, but the most advanced networks can be found in Korea. Today over 70% of Korean homes have high-speed broadband access, compared to 30% in the U.S. Korea will spend $10 billion by the end of this year to build the world's fastest wireless network with speeds of up to 50 to 100 megabits per second.
Verizon Wireless has deployed wireless broadband networks in 30 U.S. cities. Sprint is upgrading its networks and expects to offer high-speed wireless service later this year. Cingular, a joint venture of SBC Communications and BellSouth, says it will roll out 3G networks this year and expects to offer service in most big cities by the end of 2006.
Many investors are well aware of the 3G-inspired rebound in wireless stocks. As the wireless carriers built out their networks, the stocks of companies supplying the hardware, software and chips required to operate them went on a tear. Shares of Research in Motion, the maker of BlackBerry handhelds, rose fourteenfold from January 2003 to the end of 2004. Sierra Wireless, a maker of wireless modem cards, rose sixfold during the same period. Other players have seen lesser but still impressive gains over the past year or two, among them UTStarcom, a U.S. manufacturer of telecom equipment that generates half its revenue from China, and Motorola, granddaddy of wireless communication.
But now, after a two-year rise, wireless stocks are gasping for air. Many investors wonder if the sector's best days are past. However, just as the PC market evolved, with once-strong hardware companies like Wang Computers and IBM giving way to software kings like Microsoft, Oracle and SAP, so will go wireless. The smart money is betting on companies that provide applications--productivity software, games-and-entertainment and collaboration software--to those billion-plus cell phone owners.
Listen to Paul Jacobs, who will replace his father, Irwin, as chief executive of Qualcomm in July. The son runs Qualcomm's Wireless and Internet Group. "We launched EV-DO [high-speed wireless technology] in 1997, and it's only coming to market now," says Jacobs. "We want it to happen faster because the wireless consumer expects multimedia now."
It is no surprise that he is pulling for such applications. Qualcomm created a cell phone operating system called Brew. As more developers create wireless software for it, the OS will increase demand for Qualcomm's CDMA-based chipsets. Qualcomm's plan is not to develop such applications itself but to encourage other companies that are developing them. So it is backing a new display technology from Iridigm Display, which it acquired in September 2004, that will make it possible to see pictures and text on your cell phone without consuming so much battery and chip power. Jacobs has also been talking with a company involved in digital rights software management that lets you carry your digital rights to specific music, for instance, in your cell phone. Then, you can visit a friend and download his MP3s to your phone legally.
Another application being backed by Qualcomm: mobile blogging from WaveMarket. This could one day let you leave location-specific messages for specific people. A simple example: You love the frogs' legs at New York's La Grenouille restaurant. You pull out your cell phone and leave a message about the dish for your friend. The message hangs in cyberspace indefinitely, undelivered unless and until your friend walks in the door with a cell phone.
Qualcomm is not alone in promoting mobile applications. Verizon, Cingular and Sprint all need to recoup huge investments in advanced wireless networks. Their goal is to get you to sign up for extras like ring tones, games and multimedia messaging when you subscribe to their service, increasing their average revenue per user.
Downloadable ring tones, first sold in the U.S. in 2002, generated $3 billion in sales worldwide last year. Ovum Mobile Research estimates that by 2008 worldwide ring tone sales will reach $6 billion. Sales of mobile games, which generated $91 million in revenue in 2003, came to $217 million last year and will reach $1.8 billion in 2009, guesstimates research firm In-stat/MDR.
Even television is making its way to the smaller screen. Qualcomm announced in November that it would spend $800 million to build a mobile video and multimedia multicasting network across the U.S. It will let users receive broadcast television on a cell phone. Qualcomm plans service from 2006.
For investors, the best way to take part in the coming boom in wireless applications is to own a mix of small and large wireless multimedia companies. The table below lists wireless applications makers with strong growth prospects and reasonable multiples. There is still value to be found among wireless equipment companies. But the group as a whole is more expensive than the applications companies.
A worthwhile metric to evaluate these companies compares the price/earnings ratio to the earnings-per-share growth rate (more precisely, to 100 times the growth rate). Thus, if a stock's P/E is 30 and its growth rate is 15%, its PEGratio is 2. A number of wireless applications companies can be bought at PEGs of less than 1, a bargain compared with infrastructure and hardware plays like Lucent, which has a PEG of 2.39, Motorola at 1.32 and Nortel at 3.36. In the table we use projected earnings to come up with these PEG ratios.
There aren't many publicly traded wireless applications pure plays, but a number of new firms and established software companies are getting into this business. Jamdat Mobile, a developer of mobile games like Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4, was founded by former executives at Activision. It went public in September 2004 and has a PEG of just 1.1. Another 2004 new issue, Tom Online, is one of the most successful wireless Internet portals in China. The PEG is 0.4. Comverse Technology, which provides the technology that lets multimedia make it into your phone, has a PEG (adjusted for the earnings from two of its holdings, Verint and Ulticom) of 3.2
One stock to consider a core holding in any wireless portfolio is Qualcomm. Its PEG of 1.6 is a bit high, but given its stake in wireless chipsets, 3G growth and applications, it may be the best-positioned company in the sector.
Nikhil Hutheesing is editor of the twice-monthly newsletter Forbes Wireless Stock Watch; forbesnewsletters.com/wireless
China in final phase leading up to 3G launch - official
05.26.2005, 11:01 PM
http://www.forbes.com/technology/feeds/afx/2005/05/26/afx2060306.html
BEIJING (AFX) - China is in the final phase of review and testing as it prepares to launch third generation (3G) wireless telecommunications services, Wen Ku, director of the Sciences Department of the Ministry of Information Industry (MII) said.
'China has done very well in the standardization of 3G technologies, and (preparations have gone well in) both TD-SCDMA and WCDMA,' Wen said at a wireless telecom summit in Beijing.
He did not say when China will issue its first 3G license.
TD-SCDMA, China's home-grown 3G standard, has made great progress in developing systems, terminals, services, chips, standards and an environment for testing, Wen said.
'Domestic companies and research institutes have built a sound industry chain, with five companies working on chips, four working on system tests and many types of terminal products being launched,' the MII official said.
Wen added that all parties involved still need to improve terminal products and handsets.
Site selection of 3G base stations will also be a problem, he said.
'How to efficiently take advantage of the existing telecom networks and base stations is a relatively big obstacle.'
Earlier at the summit, Deng Shoupeng, ex-director of the State Council's Development and Research Center, suggested that China should grant three 3G licenses next year, one for each of the major standards - TD-SCDMA, European-backed WCDMA and Qualcomm Inc-developed CDMA2000.
'Telecom operators should compete for the licenses. The market and the operator, instead of the government, should decide how the three licenses work together,' Deng said.
China, the world's largest mobile handset market with a total of 353.71 mln mobile phone users at the end of last month, has been testing the standards since June 2001.
Beijing is believed to have been waiting for the domestically-developed TD-SCDMA to reach commercial maturity before granting any 3G licenses.
tom.wang@xinhuafinance.com
tom/wd/tr
DoCoMo Will Sell Nokia Phones for 3G Network From October
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000101&sid=aIT2zpOalGTA&refer=japan
May 27 (Bloomberg) -- NTT DoCoMo Inc., the world's second- largest cell-phone operator, will start selling Nokia Oyj phones as early as October, getting its second foreign handset maker after Motorola Inc. for its high-speed network.
Nokia, the world's largest mobile-phone maker, will produce a model for DoCoMo's so-called third-generation service, which allows users to download music and video clips and access the Internet at a faster rate than older phones, Chief Financial Officer Yoshiaki Ugaki said in an interview in Tokyo yesterday. About two-thirds of DoCoMo's 49.1 million subscribers use the carrier's older network.
The Tokyo-based company is looking to new and cheaper handsets to help capture market share as it tries to catch up with KDDI Corp. DoCoMo's smaller rival, which controls 58 percent of Japan's 31.5 million high-speed subscriber market, offers the only service in Japan that allows users to download full songs to their phones. Last month, DoCoMo said it will sell a model made by Motorola Inc. that also functions as a handheld computer to attract business users.
``A new handset is great for DoCoMo, regardless of where they come from, given that KDDI has the strongest handsets in the market at the moment,'' said Natasha Chetwynd, who manages the equivalent of $572 million, including DoCoMo shares, at Britannic Asset Management in Glasgow, Scotland. ``The foreign models already selling in the Japanese market aren't that strong.''
Ugaki didn't provide details on the new Nokia model. Nokia, based in Espoo, Finland, had made phones for DoCoMo's second- generation network between 1995 and 2000, according to DoCoMo.
Nokia, which lost market share for the first quarter in four to Motorola Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co., said it plans to offer 40 new models this year, including 10 high-speed devices.
Market to Double
DoCoMo expects the number of users on its FOMA high-speed service to more than double to 24.2 million in the year ending March 31. It had 12.2 million users on its network as of April, compared with KDDI's 18.2 million and Vodafone K.K.'s 1.1 million. Vodafone K.K. is the Japanese unit of Vodafone Group Plc, the world's biggest mobile phone operator.
Japan had about 17 percent of the world's 156 million users of the so-called third-generation services, according to 3Gtoday.com, an Internet site operated by Qualcomm Inc.
KDDI, said this week it will offer five new phones made by three domestic makers, including a phone that let users watch television programs, and a model that sends music to external audio equipment like car stereos.
KDDI buys 3G phones from Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications, while Vodafone K.K. offers handsets made by Nokia, Motorola and Sony Ericsson.
Cheaper Models
Ugaki said he plans to offer cheaper models for the 3G service, which are expected to make up about 40 percent of the phones for the network by the end of the year. Cheaper models, such as the FOMA700i series made by domestic makers such as Sharp Corp. and NEC Corp., are priced about 10,000 yen ($93) less than the higher-end phones.
``FOMA phones will become mainstream this year as we offer cheaper models,'' Ugaki said.
DoCoMo already offers handsets that include features such as those equipped with Sony Corp.'s Felica chip that allow users to pay for items such as snacks and concert tickets by swiping their phones through an electronic cashier.
Competition for users will likely increase as Japanese phone companies attempt to shift users to their more profitable high- speed networks ahead of a change next year that would allow customers to switch carriers without altering their phone numbers.
DoCoMo, 59.8 percent owned by former government monopoly Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp., earlier this month reported its first quarterly loss since it started reporting four times a year, after spending more on marketing and offering discounts.
The loss was 8.97 billion yen in the three months ended March 31, including a charge to exit an older phone network, compared with a 155.8 billion yen profit a year earlier. Sales fell 1.6 percent to 1.22 trillion yen.
DoCoMo has 56 percent of Japan's mobile-phone market, which includes the older generation networks, and KDDI holds 27 percent. Vodafone K.K.'s share is 17 percent.
Shares of DoCoMo, Japan's second-biggest company by market value, which lost more than 10 percent this year, rose as much as 1.8 percent to 167,000 yen as of 11 a.m. in Tokyo.
To contact the reporter for this story:
Aiko Wakao in Tokyo at awakao@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: May 26, 2005 22:46 EDT
Where's the next killer app?
by Ed Sperling at Electronic News
Friday 27 May 2005
http://www.electronicsweekly.com/articles/article.asp?liArticleID=39804&liArticleTypeID=4&li...
Electronic News sat down to discuss the future of consumer electronics with David Milne CEO of Wolfson Microelectronics; Michael Maia, VP of Marketing at Portal Player; Jarreth Solomon, director of technology at Lexar Media; and Allen Leibovitch, semiconductors program manager at International Data Corp. What follows are excerpts of that conversation.
Electronic News: What is the next big thing?
Leibovitch: This year, there’s certainly going to be a continuation of the iPod phenomena. But the Sony Playstation Portable is certainly going to be at the top of retailers’ minds this December.
Milne: But that’s already here. The next thing is the convergence between phones and multimedia. That’s not really here in a format that’s usable at this point.
Solomon: We’ve been trying to figure this out by looking at what happened in the past. Ten years ago we were asking what was going to happen to the PDAs and the cell phones. Well, PDAs absorbed voice capabilities. Now the phone is absorbing the PDA with Windows Mobile, MPEG 4 encode and decode, MP3, e-mail.
Leibovitch: But most of those things aren’t even traditional PDA functions. They’re multimedia functions. Phones are absorbing PDAs and PDAs are absorbing phones. But the phone that absorbs the PDA is winning. The crucial technologies in all this are multimedia. Even the PDA vendors trying to stay alive are adding multimedia because PIM [personal information management] functions are not that exciting.
Electronic News: Then the next big thing is convergence of things we already have?
Maia: The all-in-one smart phone is not where it’s going. It’s going to be things more highly tuned toward specific needs. The cell phone is the next battleground for multimedia, and clearly audio is the battleground. It’s not video for anytime in the near future until Hollywood begins to reposition the content to fit better, which is what they are starting to talk about - re-parsing the shots so the heads are larger and the shots of the horses are bigger so they fit better in the little screen. Those will be snippets - 15 seconds to three minutes.
Milne: There are two markets. There are sports events, which are adult viewing, and there is music and the clips that go with the music. There’s also another dimension in Japan, where they’re watching television downloaded onto their cell phones. That’s peculiar to the Japanese way of life, where they have long commutes and ultra-crowded conditions. You certainly can’t walk down the street watching your television.
Leibovitch: There are two things we see. One is video. That’s almost launching as a food chain, and Qualcomm is a driver behind that. That’s everything from the chips in the phones all the way up to the towers and the content. Qualcomm is doing a very good job of blurring the lines between what is broadcast and what is circuit-switched over their phone network. Ideally, the carrier can put as much onto the broadcast as possible. A lot of things like headline news and sports you can easily broadcast, and to some extent even some of the video content. There’s also content you might want to request. It’s kind of a mix. Even before that, the current battleground is audio. The technology in mobile phones is leading the content. The wireless carriers are nervous about how audio played out over broadband, where the ISPs really had no control over the content and how it was getting out there. There were major issues over licensing and content.
Solomon: The infrastructure is not there to stream live broadcasts. There is CDMA and 3G, which is in its infancy in the US. In Japan, it’s more adopted, but realistically pushing legal downloaded media to a mobile device needs to be taken into consideration. Recently IP TV has been put on hold by companies like Disney because it’s a new battleground that they’re going to have to compete in against small players. It’s going to be something that needs to be played out.
Maia: That’s happened recently with Motorola and Apple wanting to roll out a service but getting a lot of pushback from the carriers, who want to own delivery of services. They don’t want Sony, Siemens, Nokia, Motorola or Apple telling them what to do.
Electronic News: Isn’t this a case of everyone wanting a piece of the action?
Maia: Absolutely. The battleground is really which services the carriers are going to carry. Will it be like iTunes, where it only works in an iTunes product? Then it gets into the digital rights management problem. iTunes has its own fair play thing, Microsoft has its own, Real Networks has its own, which means you can’t play them on other people’s devices. For the consumer, you become a carrier-based content holder.
Leibovitch: The issue for the consumer is if they download a song with a particular digital rights management scheme to their handset. If they can’t put it on their iPod or their home media server, that becomes an issue for them. Consumers are going to resist re-buying content.
Electronic News: One of the biggest hurdles to the next big thing is that we haven’t ever come up with the perfect form factor. How do we solve that?
Leibovitch: You will see little bits of different technologies in different devices. We might see mobile phones with decent gaming capability and MP3, but they’ll still be primarily phones. And we’ll see game machines with the phone built in. There will be convergence, but each device will be targeted toward a specific technology and do one thing really well and a bunch of things okay.
Maia: Today, cameras on phones are a secondary item. You buy a phone and you get the camera for free. It costs them $20 to add the feature. In the next generation, besides just taking the picture you’ll have lots of problems. I think you’ll have the phone and the service behind it, which combined is a valuable product to the consumer who already is into that infrastructure. In Lexar’s case, and in SanDisk’s, as well, getting lots of memory to store photos and other things will appeal to another category of consumer. There will be things that instead of supporting 10 features, support one or two really good features.
Electronic News: But will it be an all-in-one solution?
Solomon: Traditionally, a God-box that does everything hasn’t done very well. It’s more specified products. The convergence of technology is a re-hash of a number of technologies that are being made smaller, combined and integrated into different products. What made the iPod take off was that it was a very easy system to use. It came bundled with an iTunes package and it was a very attractive user interface. That’s one of the things consumers are looking at now. As new products come out, the user interface has to be easy to use in order to be mass adopted.
Maia: That is the critical thing. If you hit that nail on the head, you’ve got a winner.
Solomon: Yes. Take a look at Kodak. It very recently took a leader position in the digital camera space because of the Kodak EasyShare. You plug your camera into a docking station, push a button and it prints. You don’t have to deal with Photoshop or adjusting colors; 80 per cent of the population out there doesn’t have that kind of expertise or the time to do that.
Maia: We use the iPod as a cliché. But it’s a market that other people have to participate in. It’s a very active thing. But you start to see the hockey stick with Sirius and XM in the US and overseas. That’s a completely different experience. A guy who buys a car clicks on the kind of music he wants and goes from there. That’s going to take off faster. Things we don’t have to program are going to be big.
Milne: In Europe, the XM equivalent hasn’t taken off. It’s there, and it’s been around for a relatively long time in terms of the broadcast side, although there hasn’t been the hardware to use. But it’s still pretty small. What I think will be important everywhere is WiFi. The connection to the Internet will be a major way for content to get into portable devices rather than using the phone network, which is where people are getting it at the moment. I don’t see any reason why with WiFi connections you won’t be able to pick that up all over the place much more easily.
Solomon: You have to look at the convergence of standards. There are too many WiFi options out there now. There’s [802.11] a, b, g, n -- you’re getting these large companies backing their own standards. Realistically it’s a question of who’s going to support what. On the consumer level, you have to support multiple different aspects of what WiFi will be. There are companies moving out into supporting 54 megabits per second. Ultra-wideband is moving out. Wireless USB is the next big thing everyone is talking about. Realistically, there needs to be more of a standard where consumer electronics can download media through a network that will support it.
Leibovitch: Bluetooth came out of the handset space. All those other things came out of the PC space. Portable devices need very different technology. There are companies looking at it today, but the power envelope is way too high.
Electronic News: Is the next level of convergence going to be the ability to fuse together your network from your home to your car to work?
Solomon: We are headed toward a convergence where everything will be plug and play, but there need to be standards to make it work. People will adopt it if it’s easy to use. One of the things Microsoft is working on now is a plug-and-play network, where they will stick a USB flash-card device into it and it will automatically program your network - put your firewall together, do your wireless Internet, do your wireless printing. Anything that will have a USB device can be programmed by a USB flash card. The goal is to make a network neutral to any devices that will accept a wireless connection.
Milne: The American perception of the world is very much computer driven, and that comes through clearly in what you’re saying. The rest of the world comes at it much more from a pre-configured arrangement.
Solomon: You only configure this once. After that, it works. You take the configuration out of the end user’s hands.
Leibovitch: With all of this content, whether you’re talking multimedia for consumers or enterprise data, it comes down to whether it’s a PC-centric view or not. I agree with David that the US is very PC-centric. We have Intel and Microsoft driving a lot of that view. The PC is by nature a multi-purpose device. It has a lot of storage, it has power to convert formats, and now we’re seeing connectivity between the PC and other devices. This is what Intel and Microsoft will continue pushing. That’s one direction. There are other ways to get content. One is over the TV pipe. There’s also the wireless pipe, which is more important in other regions of the world.
Maia: In the audio world, it’s a digital rights management problem. Unless you’re doing a streaming version of that content, you have rules and regulations that prevent you from taking that SD card and putting it into another device. Over the next year to 18 months, we’re going to see a whole issue of rent vs. buy. The rent model opens up a new method of distribution in the home and among friends and with people who own the same technology.
Leibovitch: I think the rental model makes more sense with video than music, because a lot of video content is disposable -- especially TV shows, news, and sports. Movies, if you really want it you’re going to buy the DVD. With music, people want to download it and own it.
Solomon: One of the challenges with that is the majority of people listen to music while they’re driving in their car. We’ve talked to several different companies and there is no plan to come out with a [digital rights management] car radio.
Maia: But I think what they’d like to do is to take a wireless communication protocol into the head-in unit. That is absolutely something going on now.
Electronic News: Does the content follow you or does the device stay with you?
Maia: Today it’s the content. Tomorrow it’s the device.
Electronic News: But now you carry it around on one device and move it to another device. Will you be able to just carry one device?
Maia: In the Starbucks WiFi world, you could.
Leibovitch: Eventually you could, but that will require some pretty serious bandwidth. The wireless networks of the world, whether they’re WiFi or 3G, just can’t bear that. Maybe in some future 3.5 or 4G WiMax world, that will be possible.
www.idc.com
www.lexarmedia.com
www.portalplayer.com
www.wolfson.co.uk
3G : Qualcomm chief dismisses Wi-Fi, WiMax threats
http://computerworld.com.sg/ShowPage.aspx?pagetype=2&articleid=1326&pubid=3&issueid=49
Stephen Lawson
IDG News Service\San Francisco Bureau
Updated: May 27, 2005 10:35 AM
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIFORNIA - Qualcomm Inc. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Irwin Jacobs defended his company's licensing strategy during a Wednesday night appearance in Mountain View, California, and said he sees no threat to it from Wi-Fi or WiMax.
The San Diego company pioneered CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) in the 1980s and now collects royalties from vendors that use the cellular technology, which has grown to include both major 3G (third-generation) mobile data systems. The strategy of setting up an ongoing source of revenue stems from Qualcomm's early days when it sold the OmniTRACS truck fleet management system as well as a service, according to Jacobs, who co-founded Qualcomm in 1985. Licensing revenue has been an essential source of funding for Qualcomm's development of CDMA-based technologies, which is still ongoing, according to Jacobs.
"One of the things you cannot do is stop. You have to keep running and keep running fast," Jacobs told an audience of Silicon Valley engineers at a Computer History Museum event.
The industry isn't about to abandon Qualcomm-linked technologies for other wireless systems in order to get out of licensing fees, Jacobs said.
He dismissed Wi-Fi hotspots as being redundant once subscribers can buy monthly services using high-speed mobile data systems such as CDMA2000 1x EV-DO (Evolution-Data Optimized), WCDMA (Wideband CDMA) and a faster version of WCDMA called HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access).
"Now that you're paying ... for a service you can use anywhere ... why would you pay extra to go to a hotspot?" Jacobs asked.
He also took digs at WiMax, a longer range wireless technology that in the future will allow for mobility.
"WiMax ... has a tremendous advantage over CDMA2000 1x EV-DO or WCDMA HSDPA. ... One of the great things is that it has the name. But it's still not a technology," Jacobs quipped, referring to the fact that WiMax for fixed broadband will not ship until later this year and the mobile version of it is still being standardized.
Time is on Qualcomm's side, because it will take years for service providers to acquire frequency licenses for WiMax and to roll out the technology, he said.
"How do you transition from one technology to another technology?" Jacobs said. "You'd better support both for some significant time period. If you want to support both ... you're a friend of ours," he said, to laughter from the audience.
From Yahoo QCOM Board: Prudential Equity Group report
dated 5/26/05
For detail, please see link:
http://finance.messages.yahoo.com/bbs?.mm=FN&action=m&board=4686818&tid=qcom&sid=468....
Chip Stocks Gain
A gauge of semiconductor-related companies rose 1.3 percent for the best performance among 24 industry groups in the S&P 500. IC Insights said it expects worldwide chip sales to rise 4 percent in 2005 because of better-than-expected global economic growth and falling customer inventories. It had projected that revenue would shrink 2 percent this year.
Intel, the world's biggest computer-chip maker, rallied 35 cents to $27.35. LSI Logic Corp., which makes semiconductors for digital-videodisc players, increased 25 cents to $6.85. Qualcomm Inc., the world's No. 2 maker of chips for cellular phones, gained 83 cents to $37.63.
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000006&sid=a6Pl7hDzdueE&refer=home
Qualcomm's EPS Growth May Outpace Handset Market
05.26.05, 9:44 AM ET
http://www.forbes.com/markets/2005/05/26/0526automarketscan03.html?partner=yahootix&referrer=
Credit Suisse First Boston reiterated an "outperform" rating and $45 target price on Qualcomm (nasdaq: QCOM - news - people ), saying it expects the company to achieve sustainable revenue and earnings-per-share growth substantially in excess of the global handset market. "We expect WCDMA adoption to accelerate in 2006," CSFB said. The research firm said the 3G start at Vodafone (nyse: VOD - news - people ) has been slow, but that the company has indicated plans to become more aggressive with 3G tariffs to spur adoption. "According to the CSFB European Telecom team, more aggressive 3G pricing could materialize by autumn of this year," CSFB said. The research firm said it believes the inventory overhang in the Americas has largely been worked through given the lower carrier inventory levels in the U.S. and an uptick in CDMA net adds in Brazil. CSFB maintained Qualcomm's fiscal 2005 and 2006 earnings-per-share estimates at $1.14 and $1.46, respectively.
Global 2005 Chip Sales Forecast Raised by IC Insights (Update1)
May 25, 2005 22:27 EDT -- Worldwide semiconductor revenue will rise this year because of better-than-expected global economic growth, according to IC Insights Inc., the latest researcher to raise its forecast for the industry.
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=conews&tkr=QCOM:US
Prudential Bache Financial Limited Technology Conference
London Renaissance Hotel
May 26, 2005, 10:00am GMT
Presentation by Dr. Sanjay Jha, President QCT
Webcast Presentation
Presentation slides
http://www.wsw.com/webcast/pru20/register.aspx?conf=pru20&page=qcom&url=http%3A//www.wsw.com...
KDDI to release new 3G handsets, including video cellphones
Monday May 23, 6:18 PM
http://asia.news.yahoo.com/050523/kyodo/d8a8qru80.html
(Kyodo) _ KDDI Corp. said Monday it will release five new handsets for third-generation mobile phone services, including video cellphones, from mid-June, adding fuel to competition with its rival NTT DoCoMo Inc.
The five handsets for KDDI's "au" service include the W32SA and the A5511T that will enable users to watch TV programs on them.
Produced by Sanyo Electric Co. and Toshiba Corp. respectively, the W32SA and the A5511T are expected to carry price tags ranging from 10,000 to 25,000 yen.
Another handset will feature an advanced global positioning system that readily locates the user's whereabouts.
While 3G mobile phone services offer super-fast data transmission and allow users to access moving pictures and high-quality audio directly from the Internet, KDDI is emphasizing the advanced audio-visual functions of its 3G handsets ahead of the summer shopping season.
In contrast, NTT DoCoMo is set to promote the 901iS series of handsets for its FOMA 3G service featuring electronic money services based on Sony Corp.'s FeliCa contactless integrated-circuit card technology.
Global Chip Sales to Rise More Than Expected, Gartner Says
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=conews&tkr=QCOM:US
May 22, 2005 22:33 EDT -- Global semiconductor sales will this year rise more than earlier forecast because of better-than- expected computer demand and inventory management, market researcher Gartner Inc. said.
Commentary: will the BroadQual Kid ride out?
Peter Clarke
EE Times
(05/20/2005 1:20 PM EDT)
http://www.eet.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=163106102
LONDON — Scott McGregor is just over five months into his job as president and chief executive officer at Broadcom Corp., having joined shortly after leaving Philips Semiconductors. He's got his feet under the desk and presumably now feels ready for a fight.
The law suits filed against Qualcomm Inc., announced Thursday (May 19), certainly look like a major legal move. All technology-based companies are protective of their intellectual property but watching such companies over many years has shown me that there are times to turn a blind-eye to competitors' actions and grow the market together, there are times not to have patents tested, and there are times — perhaps when a market is stagnant or changing its nature — when companies exert their right to let their patents and their lawyers do the talking.
Both Broadcom and Qualcomm have gone to court before over intellectual property but this could turn into a titanic struggle between two evenly-matched protagonists to see who is first among two similar and complementary fabless chip companies.
Broadcom has a broadband background, albeit one developed originally over wired links. It has been taking broadband communications wireless. Qualcomm has wireless background and has been taking communications bandwidth broader.
Both companies have got used to being the leader in their particular areas — which are becoming one. Suddenly it looks like this town ain't big enough for the both of them.
And as in a gunfight in the Wild West, Broadcom has drawn first. It remains to be seen whether the company will draw first blood. There is one solution not allowed for in any Western movie I have seen; that they shake hands and ride off into the sunset astride a single horse as the BroadQual Kid.
Wireless App Fever
Nikhil Hutheesing, 06.06.05
http://www.forbes.com/home/investmentguide/forbes/2005/0606/118.html
Handhelds will soon replace PCs as the primary Web appliance of the digital age. Get ready for the investment boom in wireless applications.
Remember the excitement over 3G, the so-called third-generation wireless networks? These were touted as the way consumers and businesses could surf the Web and send data at broadband speeds from anywhere a cell phone worked. After billions of dollars in investment and a decade of discussion, delay and disappointment, 3G networks have finally arrived in the U.S.
Verizon Wireless has deployed wireless broadband networks in 30 cities, including Austin, Tex. and Milwaukee. Sprint is upgrading its networks and expects to offer high-speed wireless service later this year. Cingular, a joint venture of SBC Communications and BellSouth, says it will roll out 3G networks this year and expects to offer service in most big cities by the end of 2006.
Many investors are well aware of the 3G-inspired rebound in wireless stocks. As the wireless carriers built out their networks, the stocks of companies supplying the hardware, software and chips required to operate them went on a tear. Shares of Research in Motion, the maker of BlackBerry handhelds, rose fourteenfold from January 2003 to the end of 2004. Sierra Wireless, a maker of wireless modem cards, rose sixfold during the same period. Other players have seen lesser but still impressive gains over the past year or two, among them UTStarcom, a U.S. manufacturer of telecom equipment that generates half its revenue from China, and Motorola, granddaddy of wireless communication. Merrill Lynch's Wireless Holders ETF more than doubled from early 2003 to the end of 2004.
But now, after a two-year rise, wireless stocks are gasping for air. Many investors wonder if the sector's best days are past. However, just as the PC market evolved, with once-strong hardware companies like Wang Computers and IBM giving way to software kings like Microsoft, Oracle and SAP, so will go wireless. The smart money is betting on companies that provide applications--productivity software, games-and-entertainment and collaboration software--to those billion-plus cell phone owners.
Listen to Paul Jacobs, who will replace his father, Irwin, as chief executive of Qualcomm in July. The son runs Qualcomm's Wireless and Internet Group. "We launched EV-DO [high-speed wireless technology] in 1997, and it's only coming to market now," says Jacobs. "We want it to happen faster because the wireless consumer expects multimedia now."
It is no surprise that he is pulling for such applications. Qualcomm created a cell phone operating system called Brew. As more developers create wireless software for it, the OS will increase demand for Qualcomm's CDMA-based chipsets. Qualcomm's plan isn't to develop such applications itself, but to encourage other companies that are developing them. So it is backing a new display technology from Iridigm Display, which it acquired in September 2004, that will make it possible to see pictures and text on your cell phone without consuming so much battery and chip power. Jacobs has also been talking with a company involved in digital rights software management that lets you carry your digital rights to specific music, for instance, in your cell phone. Then, you can visit a friend and download his MP3s to your phone legally.
Another application being backed by Qualcomm: mobile blogging from WaveMarket. This could one day let you leave location-specific messages for specific people. A simple example: You love the frog's legs at New York's La Grenouille restaurant. You pull out your cell phone and leave a message about the dish for your friend. The message hangs in cyberspace indefinitely, undelivered unless and until your friend walks in the door with a cell phone.
Qualcomm is not alone in promoting mobile applications. Verizon, Cingular and Sprint all need to recoup huge investments in advanced wireless networks. Their goal is to get you to sign up for extras like ring tones, games and multimedia messaging when you subscribe to their service, increasing their average revenue per user.
Downloadable ring tones, first sold in the U.S. in 2002, generated $3 billion in sales worldwide last year. Ovum Mobile Research estimates that by 2008 worldwide ring tone sales will reach $6 billion. Sales of mobile games, which generated $91 million in revenue in 2003, came to $217 million last year and will reach $1.8 billion in 2009, guesstimates research firm In-stat/MDR.
Even television is making its way to the smaller screen. Qualcomm announced in November that it would spend $800 million to build a mobile video and multimedia multicasting network across the U.S. It will let you receive broadcast television on a cell phone; you could watch a baseball game even if you are stuck in the office, the mall or traffic on the way to the ballpark. The system will offer 30-frame-per-second quality. Qualcomm plans service from 2006.
For investors, the best way to take part in the coming boom in wireless applications is to own a mix of small and large wireless multimedia companies. The table above lists wireless applications makers with strong growth prospects and reasonable multiples. There is still value to be found among wireless equipment companies. But the group as a whole is more expensive than the application companies.
A worthwhile metric to evaluate these companies compares the price/earnings ratio to the earnings-per-share growth rate (more precisely, to 100 times the growth rate). Thus, if a stock's P/E is 30 and its growth rate is 15%, its PEGratio is 2. A number of wireless applications companies can be bought at PEGs of less than 1, a bargain compared with infrastructure and hardware plays like Lucent, which has a PEG of 2.39, Motorola at 1.32 and Nortel at 3.36. In the table we use projected earnings to come up with these PEG ratios.
There aren't many publicly traded wireless applications pure plays, but a number of new firms and established software companies are getting into this business. Jamdat Mobile, a developer of mobile games like Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4, was founded by former executives at Activision. It went public in September 2004 and has a PEG of just 0.9. Another 2004 new issue, Tom Online, is one of the most successful wireless Internet portals in China. The PEG is 0.4. Comverse Technology, which provides the technology that lets multimedia make it into your phone, has a PEG (adjusted for the earnings from two of its holdings, Verint and Ulticom) of 3.
One stock to consider a core holding in any wireless portfolio is Qualcomm. Its PEG of 1.6 is a bit high, but given its stake in wireless chipsets, 3G growth and applications, it may be the best-positioned company in the sector.
Nikhil Hutheesing is editor of the twice-monthly newsletter Forbes Wireless Stock Watch; forbesnewsletters.com/wireless.
Jeff, Thanks for the good analysis, especially <<QCOM won`t create another non-royalty bearing TI deal, under any circumstances>>.
Broadcom Sues Qualcomm over Chips
By Nancy Luna
The Orange County Register
05/20/05 8:00 AM PT
For detail, please see link:
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/rsstory/43236.html
Biz, Please see below:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20050520-9999-1b20qcom.html
Excerpt from the above link:
<<The action against Qualcomm comes at a time when Broadcom is planning to start competing directly with the San Diego wireless giant in making "baseband" chips, which are the brains of cell phones.
"We are going into the cell-phone space," Rosmann said. "I know that some of the chips, the wireless communications chips, that we make go into cell phones now. But I also think we're moving into the cell-phone space on the baseband side."
Albert Lin, an analyst for American Technology Research, said Broadcom's tactic of suing Qualcomm brings attention to its new venture making chips that power cell phones.
He said a baseband chip sells for $8 to $20, while the chips Broadband has sold in the past to cell-phone makers are priced at about $2 each.
"Baseband chips are much more interesting as a market because they command so much money," Lin said.>>
TECHNOLOGY LEAPFROGGING IN WIRELESS
http://telephonyonline.com/mag/telecom_wireless_hot_seat/
2001
JULY — AT&T Wireless kicks off the race toward 3G, launching the first GPRS network in Seattle.
AUGUST — Cingular counters with its own GPRS network in Seattle. Both carriers move to expand their networks nationwide.
2002
JANUARY — Verizon Wireless becomes the first CDMA vendor to move to 1X, launching the service in 10 markets.
AUGUST — While Verizon beat Sprint to market, Sprint more than made up ground by turning the switch on its 1X networks nationwide.
2003
JUNE — Cingular launches the first EDGE network in Indianapolis.
SEPTEMBER — Verizon rolls out EV-DO in two markets.
NOVEMBER — AT&T counters Cingular's single-market EDGE rollout with a nationwide launch.
2004
JULY — AT&T launches UMTS in four markets, followed by another two in September.
SEPTEMBER — Verizon begins nationwide EV-DO expansion, announcing 11 new markets.
2005
2ND HALF — Sprint to roll out first EV-DO networks.
4TH QUARTER — Cingular to launch first UMTS market trials.
2006
Cingular to rollout UMTS and HSDPA.
2008
Sprint to launch EV-DO rev. A nationwide.
The wireless hot seat
By Kevin Fitchard
May 9, 2005 12:00 AM
http://telephonyonline.com/mag/telecom_wireless_hot_seat/
Ten years ago, the wireless industry was embarking on a bold new technology path, and the dominant mantra of the industry was digital networks. Technologies like CMDA, TDMA and TDMA's standardized relative GSM shot off on their own divergent development tangents, and for five years carriers occupied themselves with building out ubiquitous networks based on these second-generation technologies and turning wireless into the communications juggernaut it is today.
But after half a decade of this single-minded focus, something odd happened. New acronyms started appearing. At trade shows, barely a few seconds could pass without the letters 3G passing someone's lips. CDMA begat CDMA 1X, which begat CDMA2000. GSM begat GPRS and EDGE. And before long, the GSM community was talking about their own version of CDMA, codified in the standard for UMTS. The industry had caught the wireless data bug, and what followed was a rapid acceleration in the pace of technological innovation, driven by the promise of vast new revenue streams from the mass consumption of over-the-air bits.
While it took a while for the first actual 3G networks to appear — and carriers are still waiting for those revenue streams — it hasn't slowed the pace of innovation. In fact, carriers seem to be leap-frogging each other in deployments, and many are already committing themselves to technologies two or three steps removed from their current networks. Sprint has already said it will deploy the next revision of CDMA2000 EV-DO (evolution-data optimized) and end-to-end VoIP even though its first EV-DO network has yet to appear. And Cingular is talking up its high-speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) upgrade, even though it isn't scheduled to launch its national UMTS network until 2006, and even HSDPA's presumed successor, high-speed uplink packet access, is starting to make its way into the company vernacular.
Few would argue that the industry is now entrenched in a period of rapid technological innovation — one that many wireless experts say the sector hasn't seen since the transition from analog to digital. The push has been particularly apparent in the U.S. After years of being the last major developed market to launch new technology, North American carriers are catching up to their Asian and European counterparts, driven by fierce competition between CDMA and GSM operators. The crunch has also put pressure on vendors that are resisting the temptation to ramp up their development cycles for chipsets, base stations and handsets, which consistently lag behind the rest of industry in time to market. Despite those impediments, the cycle shows no signs of slowing, at least until the evolutionary paths of the current phase of 3G technology reach their ends.
“We're definitely in a period of technology acceleration,” said Chris Pearson, president of 3G Americas. “Standardization is moving faster, and we're seeing there is a definite need to build these data networks out as quickly as possible. Basically, we're in the middle of a technology flurry.”
The wireless industry, like any other industry, follows the typical S-curve pattern of supply and demand until something radical happens that results in a complete shift in that curve itself, said Perry LaForge, executive director of the CDMA Development Group. One of those radical shifts occurred in 1994, when the industry began its amazingly rapid shift to digital, LaForge said.
“All of the sudden, the PCS auction took place,” he said. “Carriers who bought the PCS spectrum had no analog service to speak of, and their launch over the digital-only bands forced everyone to migrate their networks to digital.”
Today's race to 3G follows the same trajectory, LaForge said. The difference is the race now involves fewer carriers, and the camps have centered around two distinct technologies. Just as Verizon's move to EV-DO forced Sprint to re-evaluate its plans for competing technology CDMA2000 evolution data/voice (EV-DV), it also prompted Cingular to commit not only to a UMTS rollout but also HSDPA, with download speeds expected to rival EV-DO. From LaForge's perspective, CDMA2000 deserves the credit. In areas where major CDMA and GSM operators go head-to-head, most notably the U.S. and Japan, the pressure to outpace the competition has been far more acute, while in single-technology markets like Europe, carriers are content to pit their UMTS networks against one another.
“The competition between NTT DoCoMo [which runs UMTS] and KDDI [CDMA2000] has pushed a lot of innovation of video and location-based services,” LaForge said. “That model will replicate itself here in the U.S.”
While much of the emphasis in the competitive landscape seems to be on technology, carriers are saying the focus is quickly centering on the deliverable services that those technologies enable. Just as the war between UMTS and CDMA-2000 in Japan has become a battle over the providing the best video application, carriers in the U.S. are no longer focusing on a technology's theoretical bandwidth, but on the services they can deliver with that technology. Issues of latency, spectral efficiency and service quality are becoming far more significant as network capabilities broach broadband speeds.
“We do have a competitive environment here in the U.S., but just because we have two different technologies doesn't mean we're focusing on the technology instead of what the customer wants,” said Chris Rinne, chief technology officer for Cingular. “We're not going to launch a new technology just to say, ‘Hey, look what we can do.’ We believe our customers get distinct advantages from the services supported by UMTS and HSDPA.”
Bringing a new cellular technology to market, however, isn't an overnight process. A new technology must make its way through the standards bodies, a process that can take years. Chipsets must be sampled. Those chipsets have to be tested, and vendors have to build and test their base stations around and against those chips. Carriers then start their laboratory and field trials. And finally, the handsets have to ship in volume.
The pressure to keep ahead of the competition has applied new pressures on vendors to get their technology ready, but so far, vendors have resisted the temptation to rush their products. Perhaps the most critical player in the supply chain is Qualcomm. It not only has a key say in the standardization of new CDMA technologies, it is a principal supplier of both CDMA2000 and wideband CDMA (WCDMA) chips. Furthermore, Qualcomm has integrated much of the new multimedia and data functionality into its standard mobile station modem (MSM) chipsets, meaning not just the core technology but the applications themselves are residing on Qualcomm silicon. Not surprisingly, many vendors' development timelines revolve around Qualcomm's sampling and commercial shipment schedules.
Herbert Vanhove, vice president of product marketing for Qualcomm, said the company has done a good job at keeping ahead of the technology curve, sampling chipsets soon after standards have been set and vetting technologies in the labs far ahead of their anticipated release (Its lead-in time has resulted in chipsets that never saw commercial release, such as its EV-DV MSM).
“There are certainly requests from carriers to accelerate technologies,” Vanhove said. “The industry would like to see the process go faster, but we have to go through rigorous testing cycles. The pressure is there, but we can't rush a technology.”
The biggest reason cited, however, for lag between a carrier's deployment announcement and its commercial launch of a technology is the availability of handsets. The lack of EDGE and UMTS handsets held back consumer data services in Europe and in the U.S. Verizon ran its EV-DO service for a year exclusively with data cards, while waiting for the availability of EV-DO handsets. Even though it has three broadband handsets in its portfolio today, only one, the LG device, is widely available.
Eric Updike, Nokia vice president of marketing and strategy for North America, said it's convenient for carriers to blame handset manufacturers for late launches, but there is a reason why handsets are the last piece in the development chain for a new technology. Samples for handset chipsets may come out at relatively the same time as base station chipsets, but handsets can't be tested until there is commercial base station gear available. Furthermore, the terminal business is critically dependent on volume sales of products that have very little shelf life before they become obsolete. A handset vendor must ensure that there will be immediate demand for a large number of its products as soon as they leave the factory floor, Updike said.
“It's a real chick-and-egg problem, and carriers are trying to squeeze the development cycles of both infrastructure and device manufacturers,” Updike said. “Still, at the rapid rate of technology [development] we have today, we have to figure out a way to get these products to market faster. I think we might have to start making some calculated investments on devices for a new technology ahead of any absolute guarantees on volumes.”
If this global flurry in rapid wireless deployments has one concrete result ,that may be the end of Europe and Asia's dominance in innovation. While carriers all over the world are leapfrogging each other in the race to 3G, activity in the U.S. has been particularly pronounced. The days of second- and third-place finishes may soon come to an end.
Two carriers have traditionally led data innovation, NTT DoCoMo in Japan and SK Telecom in South Korea, each launching their WCDMA and CDMA2000 infrastructures far ahead of the global competition. But with the new spate of deployments in the U.S., the balance is shifting.
On the UMTS side, Cingular's aggressive timeline puts it on track to launch a nationwide HSDPA network soon after NTT DoCoMo and likely far ahead of any European carrier. For CDMA, the Koreans are refocusing much of their efforts on UMTS, and the other forerunner in CDMA, Japan's KDDI, was only a year ahead of Verizon in launching EV-DO networks. Competition — between both carriers and technology camps — is the reason most cited for North America's resurgence, but industry experts say competition isn't the only factor. Carriers are becoming more comfortable with their business models and their ability to market and sell data services. Also, the potential markets for data services are far different in Asia and Europe than they are in the U.S., leaving a U.S. carrier far more freedom to experiment with new services than follow the lead of overseas operators.
“Basically throughout the industry, you went to Korea to see a new service launched,” Vanhove said. “They would be the risk-takers. Eventually that service would trickle down to the U.S. But that's starting to change. U.S. carriers are no longer just following Asia's lead. It's clearly catching up.”
Qualcomm Gets Personal
Friday May 6, 1:37 pm ET
By Dave Mock
http://biz.yahoo.com/fool/050506/111540106813.html?.v=1
In the wireless industry, everyone talks about the quest for the "killer app" -- the next big thing that mobile users will repeatedly pay top dollar to acquire. Ringtones and SMS messaging have come close to this holy grail in the past. Both services have enjoyed widespread growth and greater profits compared to other basic services.
For its part, Qualcomm (Nasdaq: QCOM - News) is doing all it can to help the industry find the next killer app. It's developed a technology called BREW, which is essentially a thin operating system for your cell phone. BREW allows users to download games or other applications directly to their phone over the air and pay for them on their regular phone bill. If you have Verizon's (NYSE: VZ - News) Get It Now service and have downloaded Frogger or Sports Illustrated swimsuit wallpaper to your phone, you know BREW.
But since ring tones and screensavers hit the mainstream, everyone's looking for something new to set them apart from the nearly 2 billion other wireless-device users around the world. Taking a cue from the past success of changeable phone faceplates, Qualcomm is now integrating new features into BREW that allow users to completely customize the look and feel of their mobile device. Called uiOne, the software solution allows developers to create fully customized graphical user interfaces (also known as GUIs) for mobile phones and sell them directly through carriers.
Since launching uiOne this February, Qualcomm has been busy demonstrating the capabilities of the new technology and providing developers with tool sets and design guides to get products on the market quickly. Yesterday, Qualcomm announced its first carrier-support agreement with Alltel (NYSE: AT - News) providing the uiOne system to Alltel's more than 8 million wireless customers.
Just as Windows transformed interaction with personal computer screens into a more graphical, feature-rich experience, so Qualcomm hopes to enhance the wireless phone interface experience. Imagine custom graphics, menus, and navigation styled around themes or brands, replacing the stale, cursor-driven interface on phones. Wireless phones are all about personalization, so I find it hard to see how this new user interface platform can go wrong.
Killer app? Maybe not. But I'd bet that once millions of users get a taste of this level of phone style, they'll never go back to plain old wallpaper.
Qualcomm talks up mobile TV, reveals trials Thu May 5, 5:46 PM ET
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050505/tc_nm/telecoms_qualcomm_dc_3
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Qualcomm Inc. (Nasdaq:QCOM - news), a provider of chips and technology licenses, said on Thursday it is testing television programing for mobile phones with TV providers such as news network CNN, ESPN and Court TV.
Qualcomm, which plans to spend about $800 million to build a network to broadcast TV to phones next year, expects video on phones to be the most popular advanced mobile service, incoming Chief Executive Paul Jacobs said at an analyst meeting.
"Interest in video far outstrips any other feature," said Jacobs, who sees TV phones becoming more popular among consumers than already well-liked features such as cameras.
Wireless operators around the world are spending billions of dollars upgrading their networks to deliver services such as video and music to phones in the hope that revenue from these services will make up for falling mobile phone call prices.
Jacobs, which expects to spin off Qualcomm's TV network MediaFlo after it is up and running, had told Reuters in March that Qualcomm had signed agreements with content partners for the network. He did not identify the partners.
Qualcomm is now in trials with ABC News, Court TV, owned by Time Warner and Liberty Media Corp (NYSE:L - news), the privately held Weather Channel and A&E, owned by Hearst (NYSE:HTV - news) and units of Disney and General Electric (NYSE:GE - news), as well as MLB.com, the Web site for major league baseball.
It is also working with Music Choice, a partnership of several technology and media firms. CNN is owned by Time Warner Inc (NYSE:TWX - news) and ABC and ESPN are owned by Disney (NYSE:DIS - news).
Qualcomm dominates the market for chips used in CDMA phones -- popular in the United States and parts of Asia -- but it only has a small share of the chip market for W-CDMA phones, used across Western Europe.
It sells W-CDMA chips to three of the world's biggest six mobile phone makers but not to the biggest two manufacturers Nokia (NOK1V.HE) and Motorola, which account for almost half of the world's mobile phone sales between them.
One executive said Qualcomm hopes to sign on one more top tier handset maker but noted that most of its negotiations to this end had been with Motorola, which already uses Qualcomm chips for CDMA phones.
Also during its investor conference Qualcomm said it plans to continue using stock options to compensate its employees after it begins accounting for them as an expense in its first fiscal quarter, ending in December.
Qualcomm sees countries such as China as key for its future growth as the Chinese government is expected to hand out new licenses to wireless operators for high-speed data services.
But Qualcomm executives said on Thursday that they now expect China to award new licenses at the end of this year instead of around the middle of 2005 as it previously hoped.
The company's shares closed down 49 cents, or more than 1 percent, at $35.16 on Nasdaq on Thursday.
NEWS Summary For qualcomm this morning:
QUALCOMM Congratulates Midwest Wireless for Launching 11 Hosted BREW(R) Operators in Less than One Year
[Press Release] PR Newswire via Yahoo! Finance - 45 minutes ago
QUALCOMM Incorporated , pioneer and world leader of Code Division Multiple Access digital wireless technology, congratulates Midwest Wireless on the tremendous success of its BREW-hosting service.
QUALCOMM Announces Support for Linux in Integrated Single-Chip UMTS and CDMA2000 Solutions
[Press Release] PR Newswire via Yahoo! Finance - 45 minutes ago
QUALCOMM Incorporated , pioneer and world leader of Code Division Multiple Access digital wireless technology, today announced support for Linux® on the Company's Mobile Station Modem (MSM) chipsets.
QUALCOMM Announces Agreement for uiOne, a Key Component of the BREW(R) Solution, With Alltel
[Press Release] PR Newswire via Yahoo! Finance - 45 minutes ago
QUALCOMM Incorporated , pioneer and world leader of Code Division Multiple Access digital wireless technology, today announced an agreement for customized user interface support based on QUALCOMM's uiOne product with Alltel , a customer-focused communications company with more than 8 million wireless customers.
QUALCOMM Introduces Next-Generation Voice Codec for Significant Network Capacity Increase on CDMA2000 Networks
[Press Release] PR Newswire via Yahoo! Finance - 45 minutes ago
QUALCOMM Incorporated , pioneer and world leader of Code Division Multiple Access digital wireless technology, today announced the Fourth-Generation Vocoder (4GV), a core voice codec suite that offers CDMA2000® 1X and 1xEV-DO operators the flexibility to make network adjustments that prioritize voice quality and network capacity.
Qualcomm to focus on WCDMA this year
Digi Times - 1 hour, 29 minutes ago
Qualcomm International, a dominant supplier of chips for CDMA2000 handsets, will now focus its efforts to promote sales of chips supporting WCDMA technology, according to Tony Li, president of Qualcomm Taiwan.
Q'comm Unveils Single-Chip Silicon
Unstrung.com - 1 hour, 59 minutes ago
SAN DIEGO -- QUALCOMM Incorporated (Nasdaq: QCOM), pioneer and world leader of Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) digital wireless technology, today announced the sampling of the RFR6500(TM) and RFT6150(TM) devices, a receive diversity solution for CDMA2000(R) 1X and 1xEV-DO networks based on QUALCOMM's radioOne(R) architecture.
Merrill Lynch's Price Objective-QCOM
http://finance.messages.yahoo.com/bbs?.mm=FN&action=m&board=4686818&tid=qcom&sid=468...
Qualcomm Inc. Analyst Meeting
Scheduled to start Thu, May 5, 2005, 8:00 am Eastern
http://biz.yahoo.com/cc/9/55459.html
CDMA2000 Leads in Bringing Advanced Services to the Market
CDMA2000 will Continue to Evolve to Meet the Future Needs of Wireless Markets
Distribution Source : PrimeZone Media
Date : Monday - May 02, 2005
http://press.arrivenet.com/bus/article.php/630275.html
COSTA MESA, Calif., May 2, 2005 (PRIMEZONE) -- The CDMA Development Group (CDG) (www.cdg.org) announced today that the CDMA2000(r) industry is evaluating various enhancement techniques for next-generation CDMA2000 technologies. Building upon current industry leading capabilities, future enhancements will further increase spectral efficiencies and data throughput and will support the convergence of fixed, mobile and multicasting networks.
Perry LaForge, executive director of the CDG, commented, "3G CDMA technologies are rapidly transforming the wireless industry from voice-centric services to data-based services. The CDMA2000 industry has led this trend by commercializing new advanced technologies ahead of the market, thus offering operators significant competitive advantages. Next-generation CDMA2000 all IP-based standards are being developed and will deliver performance, flexibility and cost benefits that will take operators well into the future."
The CDMA2000 evolution path offers competitive advantages to operators in high-speed data capabilities, cost of delivery and time to market. Through in-band migration, operators have been able to deploy CDMA2000 1X and 1xEV-DO Rev 0 and introduce enhanced voice services, broadband high-speed data and advanced multimedia services rapidly and cost-effectively. With data speeds of up to 2.4 Mbps in a single channel, 1xEV-DO Rev 0 is the fastest wireless data technology deployed today. The soon-to-be-deployed 1xEV-DO Rev A technology builds on Rev 0 capabilities and offers VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) and significantly higher data rates (3.1 Mbps in the forward link and up to 1.8 Mbps in the reverse link in a single channel) allowing operators to further differentiate their service offerings, while reducing the cost of delivery.
The CDMA2000 standard also supports multiple carriers beyond a single 1.25 MHz channel (1X). In an evolved system using multiple carriers, operators can choose to deploy up to 15 carriers in a 20 MHz bandwidth, thereby achieving data rates of up to 46.5 Mbps.
At the upcoming "Evolving to Future Wireless Telecommunication Technology" workshop organized by 3GPP2, which will take place June 27-28 in Seoul, Korea, the CDMA2000 community will discuss various proposals for next-generation CDMA2000 technologies, including air interface technologies, speech coding, core networking, IP Multi-Media Subsystems, end-to-end quality of service management, security and OMA/Application Layer. The CDG and other industry experts will be presenting at this workshop. Within the CDG Evolution Team, carrier members are developing requirements which will be shared with the standards bodies.
About CDMA2000
CDMA2000 is by far the most widely deployed 3G technology, serving more than 147 million users worldwide. There are 127 CDMA2000 commercial networks, including 18 CDMA2000 1xEV-DO systems, and 40 more are being deployed. CDMA2000 has become the technology of choice for cdmaOne(tm), TDMA, analog and Greenfield operators, and is deployed in the 450, 800, 1700, 1900 and 2100 MHz bands. More than 720 CDMA2000 devices are available on the market.
About CDG
The CDMA Development Group is a nonprofit trade association formed to foster the worldwide development, implementation and use of CDMA technologies. The 100-plus member companies of the CDG include many of the world's largest wireless operators and equipment manufacturers. The primary activities of the CDG include development of CDMA features and services, public relations, education and seminars, regulatory affairs and international support. Currently, there are more than 500 individuals working within various CDG subcommittees on CDMA-related matters. For more information about the CDG, contact Valerie Christopherson of the CDG News Bureau at +1-714-540-1030, ext. 14, e-mail vchristopherson@bockpr.com, or visit the CDG Web site at www.cdg.org.
CONTACT: CDG News Bureau
Valerie Christopherson
Ricca Silverio
(714) 540-1030
(714) 540-1060, fax
vchristopherson@bockpr.com
rsilverio@bockpr.com
HSDPA held up by handsets
April 29, 2005;
HSDPA - a faster 3G phones and data cards - is coming but not before 2006.
http://www.msmobiles.com/o/news/00269.html
HSDPA will only become a reality in the mass market in 2006, due to the late arrival of enabled handsets, according to Informa Telcoms & Media’s HSDPA Status Update, the latest in its Insight report series. Although many operators have already declared their intentions to launch HSDPA, a faster version of WCDMA, before the end of the year, these launches are set to be confined to datacard users in 2005, with a lack of enabled handsets ruling out a launch to the mass market until mid-2006 at the earliest.
‘After having to repeatedly delay the full commercial launch of their WCDMA networks in 2003 and 2004 due to a shortage of handsets, these same operators are going to endure an exact repeat of the situation when it comes to HSDPA,’ said John Everington, Senior Research Analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media.
‘Despite early predictions from Samsung, LG and NEC of handsets becoming available from the end of 2005, HSDPA-enabled handsets are only likely to appear commercially in large volumes from mid-2006 onwards, forcing operators to limit their launches to datacard users in the initial stages.’
US operator Cingular Wireless is set to become the first major operator to launch HSDPA on its network in late 2005, after NTT DoCoMo announced several delays to its deployment plans, with the Japanese operator now forecast to launch HSDPA in the second half of 2006. O2 is pushing to become the first European operator to commercially launch the technology across its footprint, following commercial trials on the Isle of Man in the summer of 2005.
Informa Telcoms & Media’s HSDPA Status Update covers:
* A summary of the advantages and capabilities of HSDPA technology
* A detailed analysis of the different business cases being adopted by operators looking to roll out HSDPA, including case studies on Cingular, NTT DoCoMo, and O2
* A vendor-by-vendor analysis of the HSDPA infrastructure market
* A review of developments and challenges in the HSDPA handset market.
KDDI posts record profit
http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&cat=4&id=335830
Friday, April 29, 2005 at 07:24 JST
TOKYO — KDDI Corp said Thursday its group net profit in fiscal 2004 jumped 71.4% over the previous year to an all-time high of 200.59 billion yen on strong earnings in its "au" cell phone service.
KDDI reported a 4.3% rise in pretax profit to 286.34 billion yen for the year ended in March, with operating revenues increasing 2.6% to 2,920.04 billion yen, also a record high. (Kyodo News)
Mobile TV to reach 125 million users by 2010
Friday April 29, 2005 8:21 AM EST
By: Fabrizio Pilato
Source: Reuters
http://www.mobilemag.com/content/100/344/C3984/
How does TV on your mobile phone sound? Analysts expect 125 million of them to be floating around in our hands by the year 2010. So far 130,000 TV phones will have been sold by the end of this year around the world, but the majority will be to Asian and European markets.
Mobile TV, which is broadcast to all users simultaneously, will offer higher quality picture than mobile video streams, which are streamed to individual users when requested.
Nokia reported their plans to introduce a mobile TV in the first half of 2006, Samsung Electronics from Korea showed the first Mobile TV phone two years ago, the SGH-E715.
Mobile chip-makers Philips and Qualcomm have plans to release energy-efficient mobile TV chips by the end of this year. Prepare to have a TV everywhere; in your hands or on the walls, wherever you may go, I even see them above urinals in bathrooms now. Big brother is really here.
Research and Markets: Top 10 Wireless Services and Applications Issues for US Market in 2005
Friday April 29, 10:30 am ET
DUBLIN, Ireland, April 29 /PRNewswire/ -- Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c16632 ) has announced the addition of Top 10 U.S. Wireless Services Issues in 2005 to their offering.
(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20040820/RESEARCH )
This study identifies the top 10 wireless services and applications issues for the U.S. market in 2005, which promises to be a year of challenges and opportunities for the wireless and IT industries. These top 10 issues (in alphabetical order) are broadband, the Cingular - AT&T Wireless merger, content management ecosystems, enterprise-friendly application development environments, integration of wireless and wireline services, location-based services, MMS interoperability, MVNOs, security, and video programming and delivery.
'2005 promises to be a year of even more rapid evolution and change than 2004,' notes Scott Ellison, program director, Wireless and Mobile Communications. '3G wireless broadband creates whole new market opportunities and challenges, while the market entry of highly differentiated MVNOs like ESPN could fundamentally alter the wireless services landscape,' he added.
2004 saw the wireless industry continue to boom: More than 18 million additional subscribers were added, data ARPU reached 5-8% of total service provider ARPU, and the sheer amount of content continued to explode. Sprint and Cingular committed to 3G deployments, and Verizon Wireless will finish the year with over one-third of its nationwide EV-DO network commercially launched. AT&T Wireless exited the market by selling itself to Cingular for $47 billion, after nearly 20 years of McCaw Cellular/AT&T Wireless being one of the most pioneering and visionary wireless providers; its long run ended on the ignoble note of operationally imploding, with years' worth of under- investment in its network and customer service finally catching it in the vise-grip of market competition and wireless local number portability. But 2004 draws to a close with the extraordinary announcement by QUALCOMM that it has bought nationwide TV licenses to send TV programming directly to cell phones by year-end 2006, and with the planned market entry of ESPN as the first content-focused and gender-targeted wireless service provider. These developments form the backdrop to the top issues that IDC predicts will face the U.S. wireless services market in 2005.
For more information visit
http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c16632
Laura Wood
Senior Manager
Research and Markets
press@researchandmarkets.com
Fax: +353 1 4100 980
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Research and Markets
Chip inventory levels dropping fast
http://www.electronicsweekly.com/articles/article.asp?liArticleID=39461&liArticleTypeID=3&li....
Resources Zone: Business
by David Manners
Tuesday 26 April 2005
Chip inventory levels dropping fast
Q1 inventory levels dropped much faster than expected, according to analyst iSuppli, giving a very positive signal for market growth in 2005.
“The value of surplus chip stockpiles in the electronics supply chain plunged to $500m in the first quarter, down 51.5 per cent from $1.03bn in the fourth quarter of 2004,” said iSuppli.
The firm said its analysis is based on preliminary findings from its Semiconductor Industry Tracker service.
iSuppli previously predicted that total excess semiconductor stockpiles in the first quarter would decline by 24 per cent to reach $780m.
"Q1 was much stronger than moist people expected and that will be the pattern for the rest of the year," said Malcolm Penn, CEO of Future Horizons, the analyst company which predicts 15 per cent semiconductor market growth in 2005
Chip Inventory Glut Falls in More Than Expected (Update1)
April 26, 2005 19:57 EDT -- Global semiconductor inventory shrank more than projected during the first quarter because of better-than-expected sales of chips such as microprocessors, market researcher ISuppli Corp. said.
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=conews&tkr=QCOM:US
W-CDMA chipset runs 15frames/s QCIF video streaming
Tuesday 26 April 2005
http://www.electronicsweekly.com/articles/article.asp?liArticleID=39462&liArticleTypeID=5&li...
Qualcomm is sampling its handset chipset for W-CDMA 3G mobile designs.
The MSM6225 chipset, which is fabbed on 90nm process technology, includes the powerOne PM6650 power management device and the radioOne RTR6250/RFR6250 radio modem supporting W-CDMA (2100MHz) and quad-band GSM (850/900/1800/1900 MHz).
Radio interface capabilities include Bluetooth and a 384kbit/s data stream in both uplink and downlink.
Video processing capability offers 15frames/s QCIF to enable playback and streaming of mainstream video content and there is Windows Media video codec support.
Audio support includes SMAF, MIDI, MP3, AAC and aacPlus formats. It will also support video processing from a 1.3megapixel camera.
www.qualcomm.com
Tel: 01252 399100
Jim, Thanks for additionnal info on Thales:
<<Per this snip, Thales is a big outfit (apparently Euro also) .
(Thales) The Group employs 60,000 people throughout the world and generated revenues of 10.3 billion euros in 2004>>
Banc of America's two top picks are Nokia (nyse: NOK - news - people ) and Qualcomm (nasdaq: QCOM - news - people ), both rated at "buy" with respective price targets of $23 and $40.
http://www.forbes.com/markets/2005/04/26/0426automarketscan02.html?partner=yahoo&referrer=
stricklybiz, MediaFLO USA are expected to emerge in the latter half of 2006, please see link:
http://www.reed-electronics.com/electronicnews/article/CA525862.html