Well actually cell phones were very expensive 30 years ago, only rich people or business owners had them. The per minutes charges on analog cellular were very high.
Qualcomm worked on Trials for years with service providers before CDMA went commercial, they were not making a profit at the time but they moved forward with what they had because it was better then what was out there. In terms of voice privacy and more important capacity.
They had an excellent business model with the technology licensing the tech to the infrastructure providers such as Motorola and Lucent. And of course mobile manufacturers had to license the tech to be able to sell mobiles.
There was basic CDMA, continued improvement to 1XRTT CDMA ( voice and data) then to EVDO ( 3g data )and finally now to LTE which will go advanced LTE and then whatever 5G will be. They do not have a strangle hold on LTE due to it being an open tech developed by all major companies in the industry, but they still have patents related to it.
They did not start with the end product or go commercial with the end product they went commercial with a product that worked, improved on it and advanced the tech and sold that and continued from 1992 thru to now.
That is how it is done, not by never going commercial till the blockbuster product and profit all in one.
JMHO
Bill
