Qualcomm announces UMTS/GSM/GPRS chipset

[northform]

Qualcomm has announced the MSM6275 chipset that is capible of UMTS(wCDMA), GSM and GPRS transmissions. Of course, I'm sure that someone will post that Qualcomm is lying and that wCDMA is completely and totally incompatible with GSM and that Qualcomm must just want to go out of business and that's why they are lying to make the competing technology look good. . .

[Bugwart]

Originally posted by: northform Of course, I'm sure that someone will post that Qualcomm is lying and that wCDMA is completely and totally incompatible with GSM and that Qualcomm must just want to go out of business and that's why they are lying to make the competing technology look good. . .

And why is that?

[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-confused.gif[/img]

[Jerro]

northform:
Are you into design or engineering?

Your posts are interesting and for that matter mostly right on target.

As to Qualcomm lying, why would they? They must want to achieve higher market share too.

[northform]

I'm in a 3-2 programme with Harvard and MIT so I am working toward a BS in engineering to compliment a BA in history.

No, Qualcomm isn't lying. I guess you missed the big hoopla about wCDMA being compatible with GSM. Pretty much everyone said that there was no way that they could be compatible (here) and when I quoted ATT, Cingular, Ericsson, Nokia, Lucent, and - most importantly - Qualcomm people still wouldn't believe that they would be compatible. My point was that those people who favour Qualcomm's CDMA won't believe Qualcomm when Qualcomm says that the competition works and yet they will believe Qualcomm when Qualcomm says that their own technology works.

Qualcomm would have a motive for saying that wCDMA couldn't work with GSM. If that were true, there would be no barrier to entry for Qualcomm's CDMA in markets that already used GSM.

Oh, wCDMA is not a Qualcomm technology. It does use one of Qualcomm's patents - hence it is not totally bad for the - but the majority of the technology involved comes from GSM or is new and comes from different companies. So, while Qualcomm does get royalties from wCDMA, they aren't near the ammount that they get from their own CDMA.

[Kenster]

I'm confused about something here. First of all, I must've missed the hoopla about the incompatibility issue between GSM and wCDMA here in this forum -- but I thought that even the GSM camp/carriers were saying that wCDMA was not backwards compatible with GSM?

You'll have to clarify something here...despite the fact that Qualcomm has produced a chipset that can support both GSM and wCDMA, it doesn't necessarily follow that all of sudden wCDMA is backwards compatible with GSM. In a certain way you actually could say that they are "compatible" by way of this new chipset.

For example, Qualcomm's new MSM6300 series chipsets will allow a phone to roam on both GSM and CDMA, but the 2 networks are still considered "incompatible" and always have been. Again, it's a matter of english semantics because one could argue that since this new chipset allows roaming on both networks then doesn't it follow that GSM and CDMA are indeed compatible technologies?

Anyhow, Texas Instruments, Nokia and STMicroelectronics (Europe's largest chipmaker) recently announced that they were teaming up to build CDMA2000 1x chips...thus offering some competitive heat for Qualcomm on their home turf. As the dominant chipmaker for CDMA chips, why wouldn't Qualcomm jump from the lake and into the ocean to compete? They know very well that the world will be split between CDMA2000 1x and wCDMA, with the latter having the much bigger slice of the pie.

But definitely Qualcomm will enjoy royalties from both CDMA2000 and wCDMA, although with probably a bit more $$$ with CDMA2000 (as a % per handset) but wCDMA has a much bigger playing field where they'll benefit immensely. There's no doubt that Qualcomm is playing hardball with it's patents on wCDMA:

"May 10, 2002
Qualcomm Rejects Nokia Patent Cap Proposal
By Ryan Naraine

Qualcomm Inc. (Quote, Company Info) has scoffed at calls for an industry-wide 5 percent limit on royalty rates for 3G patents, dismissing the proposal by competitor Nokia as "self-serving."
...
"We have licensed more than 50 companies for (use of) WCDMA technology. That list includes Nokia. That demonstrates that the industry thinks our rates are fair and reasonable and not an impediment to the deployment of 3G services," she added.
...
Trimble said the company has registered more than 1,900 patents (issued and pending) for CDMA technology and challenged claims by the Finland-based Nokia (Quote, Company Info) that it owns more WCDMA patents than any of its competitors.

On Wednesday, Nokia called for a hard cap on royalty rates for 3G patents, arguing that such a move would promote the spread of the WCDMA technology.

Nokia argued that capping the licensing fees for WCDMA technology at 5 percent would "encourage growth and innovation in the industry." Under the Nokia proposal, which would be applicable to both network gear and phones, patent holders would agree to limit the cumulative royalty rate to a maximum of 5 percent, regardless of how many patents the equipment includes.
...


Qualcomm still stands to benefit quite nicely with its wCDMA licensing royalties. Qualcomm holds hundreds of CDMA patents but the GSM camp weren't able to completely side-step the most fundamental CDMA patents with wCDMA. Right now I believe QC gets about 4.5-5% royalties from handset manufacturers. Even if QC was getting slightly less than that (percentage-wise) from wCDMA royalties, they still stand to win when they'll be going from a market size of tens of millions of handsets (CDMA) to hundreds of millions (wCDMA).

And don't forget the cross-licensing deal between Nokia and QC:
"As part of the agreement, Nokia will continue to pay royalties to QUALCOMM for subscriber equipment at the same rates established by the terms of the original cross-license agreement in 1992, irrespective of the CDMA standard implemented."

"Thrown into the deal is another agreement that is equally noteworthy. Nokia will continue to pay CDMA handset royalties to Qualcomm at the same rate that it currently pays, regardless of the CDMA technology used in a product. Nokia has licensed Qualcomm's CDMA handset technologies since 1992, but the two companies never agreed whether that included W-CDMA and, if it did, how much Nokia would pay Qualcomm in royalty fees for that specific technology. Nokia now has official access to the technology while Qualcomm can more accurately forecast revenue."