InterDigital Inc (IDCC)

[TFWG]

Motorola and InterDigital??? Did I read that correctly (below)?
Change the name of WCDMA to 3GSM? Hmmmm, the Q won't like that at all. People won't be confused anymore.....
Lose UMTS?
article is strangely written, but I like what I read

http://www.totaltele.com/view.asp?ArticleID=105262&CategoryID=964&pub=tt

Nortel targets 25% share of UMTS market


By Anne Morris, TOTAL TELECOM, in Cannes
25 February 2004

Canadian vendor now looking ahead to next stage of 3G with HSDPA.

What does the mobile industry need to show at Cannes to ensure 2004 will be a successful year?

Nortel Networks said it is aiming to capture 25% of the global UMTS market in the next few years as the Canadian vendor expects to gain more of the market in Western Europe and take a strong stake in emerging regions such as Eastern Europe and China.

According to Scott Wickware, vice president of UMTS product solutions at Nortel, the company currently has a 15-20% share of all announced UMTS contracts and sees itself in joint third place after the likes of Ericsson and Lucent.

Wickware, who was speaking at the 3GSM World Congress in Cannes, commented that Nortel has seen good momentum with UMTS over the past six to nine months, announcing deals with Partner in Israel and Orange, to name two mobile operator wins. He expects to see more deals announced soon, although he could not be specific about companies or timeframes.

He also said he is "pretty confident" that Nortel will start to win business with 3G start-up 3, as the vendor now has a business relationship with the Hutchison group through the Partner win.

"The slow down over the last couple of years has helped us," Wickware added, since early decisions in favour of other vendors have in many cases been revised. He also believes, as Nortel has often stressed before, that the vendor has benefited from the fact that it has a foot in both the GSM and CDMA markets since UMTS is based on wideband CDMA technology.

And he thinks attempts to "rebrand" WCDMA as 3GSM are just an effort by GSM-focused operators and vendors to get rid of the "four-letter acronym CDMA" from UMTS.

Nortel, like many other vendors and operators, is now looking ahead to the next stage of 3G – high-speed downlink packet access or HSDPA. Wickware expects trials to start next year and is confident that market volume will start to build up in around 2006.

"Everybody wants it," said Wickware of HSDPA – and indeed both Motorola and InterDigital have also been very vocal about their plans for the technology at the show.

Handsets that support the technology will be out on the market in late 2005, he believes. Users will require completely new handsets, he stressed, although for operators the upgrade is a matter of adding in new software.

HSDPA essentially improves the way 3G networks work by enabling the better utilisation of spectrum.

"With HSDPA the user experience will be like WiFi," Wickware added.

Also in Nortel's sights is the ability to offer a converged core IP network that can support any access technologies whether they are fixed or wireless. The vendor is also looking at ways of bringing down the cost of equipment to help boost network deployment.