GSM vs. CDMA
http://www.3gamericas.org/index.cfm?...age&pageid=565
Regarding the standards and who dominates.
Apple will focus on GSM and UMTS-HSPA then on to LTE.
Regarding the standards and who dominates.
Apple will focus on GSM and UMTS-HSPA then on to LTE.
Comments
First of all, the GSM side counts SIM cards --- so there is a lot of double counting. But even taking those double counting out, CDMA probably only has about 15% of the world market --- but they are concentrated in the big first world countries (US, Canada, Japan and South Korea).
First off your logic is weak. If I buy 3 phones that use the same SIM I have 1/3rd the count versus buying 3 separate phones within the same CDMA network all being registered, not just 1 SIM card.
The number of unique users for GSM is stomping all over CDMA and it's expanding, not shrinking.
First off your logic is weak. If I buy 3 phones that use the same SIM I have 1/3rd the count versus buying 3 separate phones within the same CDMA network all being registered, not just 1 SIM card.
The number of unique users for GSM is stomping all over CDMA and it's expanding, not shrinking.
i dont get what point your trying to make? We all know CDMA is "old news" GSM/LTE/UMTS/HSPA whatever other name you want to give it WILL be the way to go. That doesnt mean CDMA is going away overnight. It is apart of america's largest network and also active in major parts of the world. Why not bank on that for the next 1-2 years then bank on those same people as their networks(most of them anyway) switch to LTE? why is it wrong? Its about profits, profits that Apple CANNOT pass up for a 1-2 year period. Will they do it though is the question
I expect the next iPhone to be roughly 400% faster than the very first iPhone on theoretical benchmarks. Much like the GS versus 2G, I expect it to be probably 200% faster in real life usage.
If every other part of the phone can improve over the course of the years, including the radio chip which has gone from EDGE to 7.2, then there is enough room in those improvements to deal with whatever is necessary in terms of grabbing sales. The majority of the world doesn't even use a smartphone nor browse the web on one. The last Admob report noted that 50% of iPhone requests still come from within the United States.(PDF) It notes those requests came from 25 million unique iPhone users with half that in the U.S. and half from outside the U.S.
That means that 12.5 million of them came from in the U.S. The easiest way to grow this number in a quick fashion is to intro a world phone as Blackberry has done and reap the benefits while still growing their marketshare throughout the rest of the world.
Apple needs to do something. The same report, which everyone around here has loved quoting forever, shows Apple as 55% of all smartphone requests in September and also 55% of all smartphone requests in October. The problem is that Android was 20% of all requests in September and 27% of all requests in October. If it were Apple growing 33% a month, we would all be hearing about it.
First off your logic is weak. If I buy 3 phones that use the same SIM I have 1/3rd the count versus buying 3 separate phones within the same CDMA network all being registered, not just 1 SIM card.
The number of unique users for GSM is stomping all over CDMA and it's expanding, not shrinking.
I believe the point the prior poster was making is when you buy a replacement mobile phone, you now have two SIM cards but clearly only one is active. But think about this... the number of GSM subscriptions in the world is stated as 3.5 BILLION. In other words, one out of every two persons in the entire world (including 95 and 1 year olds) have a GSM phone. Ummm, no way is that right considering there are huge countries that barely have running water, etc. As for CDMA, is a market of 450 million worth ignoring?
The rest of the world has a very high proportion of prepaid subscribers. In some of these countries, you just have to top up once a year in order to keep your SIM card (and mobile telephone number) active. Penetration rate has been estimated to be over-stated by about 15-20% in the whole European continent.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine...3/b3776013.htm
If you just look at SIM cards --- you would think that Italy would have the highest iphone per capita because they have something like 150% mobile penetration rate (or Greece with 170% penetration rate). The problem is that their whole population is prepaid and everybody has 2-3 SIM cards in their desk drawers (which they top up once a year).
The CDMA countries --- are (1) first world rich countries and (2) high proportion of postpaid subscribers.
Well 25% comes from India (100M). Which is not exactly a rich country and the highest postpaid subs is with Vodaphone...GSM.
http://www.cellular-news.com/story/38835.php
The rest of the world has a very high proportion of prepaid subscribers. In some of these countries, you just have to top up once a year in order to keep your SIM card (and mobile telephone number) active. Penetration rate has been estimated to be over-stated by about 15-20% in the whole European continent.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine...3/b3776013.htm
Your link talks about the US market and how a shakeout looms and has nothing to do with the discussion.
Overall, prepaid accounts are 65% of the total cell market so given GSM dominance it shouldn't be hard to see some markets where prepaid completely dominate postpaid (like Italy). But in other GSM markets postpaid dominates. Like France where prepaid is 35% of the market.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Prepai....html?x=0&.v=7
Pre-paid is low in the US because we charge for incoming calls, our prepaid contracts haven't been as good as european ones and we haven't been pushing prepaid here...not because there's CDMA here. Now that there are more attractive prepaid options prepaid has been growing in the US.
http://www.xchangemag.com/articles/5...providers.html
It's a hard sell to claim some strange CDMA advantage given that GSM is handily beating CDMA today and going to kill it the next generation given the death of UMB.
Well 25% comes from India (100M). Which is not exactly a rich country and the highest postpaid subs is with Vodaphone...GSM.
Your link talks about the US market and how a shakeout looms and has nothing to do with the discussion.
It's a hard sell to claim some strange CDMA advantage given that GSM is handily beating CDMA today and going to kill it the next generation given the death of UMB.
I can say that 4 billion GSM users and 3-3.5 billion of those are in the second and third world. The vast majority of the CDMA users are in the US, Canada, Japan and South Korea.
The businessweek article specifically mentioned that without such double counting, the European mobile penetration in 2002 would be low to mid 60% (instead of the 80% claimed) --- therefore there are 15-20% over-estimate.
I never claimed that there are some strange CDMA advantage. I said that CDMA users are concentrated in the big rich first world country, with high concentration of postpaid (where you can actually get the iphone for $199 because of contract/subsidy). These are the people who can afford the high price of the iphone, and the carrier can afford to give high amount of subsidy (because of the high percentage of postpaid).