Replies to post #16670 on Qualcomm Inc (QCOM)

[dwdkc]

These days I don't much see the point of the GSM vs. CDMA bickering to a QCOM shareholder. I also don't much care whether they call it 3GSM or WCDMA, as long as QCOM receives big royalty increases and it's good for my investment. I'm disappointed the CDMA variants through the non-WCDMA 3G versions haven't done better, but the advantages of huge installed GSM base was tough to overcome, and as long as they're growing earnings rapidly and building a good chip business to support what's getting sold in the future, does it matter?

[Michael Allard]

And of course, the numbers never lie!

I remember many years ago when we were comparing CDMA vs GSM subscribers an article that claimed the GSM count was significantly flawed because they count active SIM cards which they consider to be a subscriber. Old cards were counted, pre-pay cards were counted, etc. I'm sure by now we are getting better numbers than we were, but the posted totals still do not stand up to reason to me given that:

The world population is 6.4 Billion.
53% live on less than $2/day, leaving 3.4 Billion
29% of those are under 15 years old, leaving 2 Billion of which over 10% are over 65 years old.

Yet these subscriber counts add up to 2.17 Billion as of the end of 2005 and growing by 500 - 600 Million a year!

I'm sure someone will post how the GSM group cleaned up their act and clam to count only active subscribers, and many kids under 15 have phones, and even elders have been seen with cell phones, and many people have 2, etc, etc, but still, to me, these numbers do not make sense.

As of the end of 2004, there were roughly 1.5 Billion worldwide subscribers claimed. At the end of 2005, there were 2.17 Billion, an addition of 670 Million subs. Yet other data indicates that 816 Million mobile phones were sold during 2005, with some 73% of them being upgrades. This would indicate new subscribers of only 195 million, yet we have a reported increase of 670 million?

However these numbers are counted, there is something fishy still going on!

I read that there could be 1 Billion phones sold in 2006. According to QCOM's estimates, they will move 283 Million chipsets into the market (96 million of WCDMA which they have less than 50% market share of) indicating around 400 Million of these 2006 sales to be CDMA/WCDMA phones. So this would indicate CDMA with 40% market share, I would guess GSM to be somewhere in the 50% to 55% range, and the balance (5% - 10%) split between TDMA, PDC, IDEN and amps.