Qualcomm Inc (QCOM)

[Data_Rox]

The Lord of Mobility
By Schwartz, Ephraim, Jan 30 2003
http://www.thefeature.com/index.jsp

SOMETIMES I think of myself as a war correspondent stuck in Middle Earth, covering the dark forces of Mordor converging against the forces of light. Unfortunately, I'm stuck behind enemy lines. Just got off the phone with Microsoft.

I was briefed by Big Red on its announcement made at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this month of a CDMA and CDMA 1XRT version of Pocket PC Phone Edition. Pocket PC Phone Edition is a superset of Pocket PC 2002, allowing its mobile phone OS to run on Verizon and Sprint networks, in addition to the current GSM/GPRS networks, AT&T, Cingular, and T-Mobile.

This means that a developer can write a single application for any part of the mobile market and target everything from an HP iPaq to all the wireless network operators and all the handset manufacturers that build cell phones for them.

In the very recent past, if a developer wanted to deliver products for the mobile market, the developer either had to focus on one network or develop two separate applications, one for each.

The Symbian OS runs on GSM/GPRS phones. Brew runs on CDMA, and there is talk of it covering the GSM/GPRS networks. Palm also runs on both networks, but to date it is not considered a real player in the cell OS market.

Will Microsoft make its platform available for Brew and Java applications? I asked Ed Suwanjindar, product manager for the Microsoft mobile devices division in Redmond, Wash. "There's no reason that can't be done. If people want to run Java apps or Brew on top of our platform, people can do that," he says.

In other words, "No. If you want it, you do it without our help."

Here's what I find curious. There is barely a market for sophisticated converged Pocket PC devices, such as the ones Hitachi and Samsung announced at CES, with 400MHz processors, keyboards, cameras, and Microsoft Office built in, running on any network. Yet Microsoft appears arrogant in its refusal to seed the industry, even for its own benefit.

By the way, Suwanjindar is not arrogant; he's a nice guy. And, while we're at it, Bill Gates isn't Sauron. But if one can call a strategy arrogant, this is it. Microsoft is unwilling to lift a finger to help make the market, although Suwanjindar agreed with me that these converged devices are not yet market-driven products. The market is still to be made. What does Microsoft know that I don't?

"In four, five, and six years down the road, there will be an addressable market in the hundreds of millions of units; Suwanjindar says.

There's my answer. Suwanjindar is telling me that Microsoft can afford to wait. (At least the company thinks it can.) Like it waited until Word engulfed WordPerfect; Excel, Lotus 1-2-3; Outlook, Lotus Notes. The list of casualties is legion.

And so, I sit in my bunker watching as the armies amass in the shadows, waiting to swoop down on the ragtag assembly of dwarfs, elves, hobbits, and men, and I wonder: Do they have a chance?