more on All hail the new iPhone - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Begin forwarded message:

From: Rod Van Meter <rdv <at> tera.ics.keio.ac.jp>
Date: January 13, 2007 12:13:46 AM EST
To: dave <at> farber.net
Cc: Thomas Leavitt <thomas <at> thomasleavitt.org>, Dewayne Hendricks  
<dewayne <at> warpspeed.com>
Subject: re: [IP] more on All hail the new iPhone - Pittsburgh  
Tribune-Review
Reply-To: rdv <at> tera.ics.keio.ac.jp

> I'm utterly baffled as to why Steve Jobs would tie the success of the
> launch of this product to a single vendor...

Why?  Like it or not, AT&T (or whatever the name is this week) is
effectively the only choice if you want to use GSM in the U.S., and if
you want to sell the product anywhere else in the world, you MUST do
GSM.  CDMA-1x is available, to a first approximation, only in the U.S.,
Japan, South Korea, and parts of China.  Anywhere else, it's GSM, with
or without EDGE, leading into WCDMA (3G).

>  In
> fact, if it is his attention to capture 1% of the WORLD cellphone
> market, that seems almost mandatory...
>

There you have it.  You have to be careful with sales stats.  Most of
the world's cell phone makers, when they cite, e.g., "40% of the world
market", there is often an asterisk and the fine print says, "except
Japan".  Japan, until relatively recently, was an entirely different
world for cell phones, with sales very large compared to its population,
but the figure of a billion phones a year sounds like it includes Japan.

I'm actually fairly indifferent to the iPhone, but it doesn't matter --
with no WCDMA, it's useless here.  Quad-band GSM will cover most of the
world except Japan and South Korea, but I'll have to wait for a WCDMA
(or, if I'm willing to change providers, CDMA-1x) version, while Koreans
will have to wait for the -1x.  I'm not holding my breath, though; it's
HARD.  If you printed out all of the specs for 3G, they wouldn't fit on
the average American kitchen table -- but that's a very long story.

Speaking of such things, I have often found the maps and other info
available at http://www.gsmworld.com/roaming/gsminfo/index.shtml to be
useful.

		--Rod

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