wilco, we will never know for sure what caused IDCC's board to move so quickly in releasing Mark Gercenstein, but will share one observer's opinion.
IDCC was doing some ground breaking work on two different fronts in wireless development at that point in time, i.e., 3G wcdma for cellular applications AND the 802.nx WLAN/WiFi/WiMax local area stuff. There was a lot of hype in the press at the time about how the "for free" WLAN stuff would explode into becoming "the next big thing" in wireless.
Guessing that hype had to be something of a concern for all of the mega firms making their living from cellular tech, i.e., the operators like Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, ect around the world, AND their equipment suppliers like Nokia, Samsung, Ericsson, ect. If the wireless world DID go the WLAN way, where would that leave them?
Key point that I think Mark Gercenstein missed was that all those cellular folks represented almost all of IDCC's market, i.e., they were the deep pockets customers for 3G IPR licensing.
IDCC had a wireless tech wizzard from France at the time with a title something like "Chief Technology Officer"(I forget his name, but he also got dumped soon after Gercenstein). His big passion was multi-mode, and he strongly believed that the future for wireless was WLAN for local and celluar just for connecting all those thousands of local cells.
While that concept might be technically feasible, you can imagine what all of the big cellular firms thought about it, i.e., "You want to do what? turn the wireless marketplace into a two-tiered structure with us only doing the backhaul network connections?? Yikes!".
Think about a world where all the user devices/handsets are WLAN and cellular tech is only used to do the backhaul connections of the locally owned and operated WLAN base stations. That is a horror story to the current cellular industry, i.e., to IDCC's customers.
Guess what IDCC did with Gercenstein calling the shots as CEO?(Here comes the punch line in my theory re what happened to those two market-blind, but otherwise sharp fellows.) IDCC's CTO got up his two hind legs at the 3GSM conference where the "who is who" of the cellular industry gathers each year and delivered his "It's gonna be a WLAN world, and IDCC is going to make it happen" story. Talk about putting doggie poot in the punchbowl, that HAD to have been a big stinking HORSE poot at the 3GSM conference.
As IDCC's CEO Gercenstein was responsible for that position and the decision to present it at 3GSM. In any case, he was abruptly removed a few weeks later and the CTO departed soon after.
Multi-mode is important, and it's great that IDCC has breakthru tech patented in that field, but take notice of how Bill Merritt talks about it today compared to the total marketing blunder under Gercenstein's watch. My hunch is that the cellular industry folks burned up the lines of IDCC's board menbers demanding somebody's head soon afer that 3GSM pitch, and they got two.
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