Wireless Industry Analyst

The talk of the industry yesterday was the Bush denial to veto the ITC ban on QualComm chips entering US market. It hardly surprises me, and it should not surprise anyone including QualComm. My reasons -

1. The President is unlikely to set a bad precedent trying to encourage practices that can be perceived as monopoly. A veto would have made QualComm more brazen. In fact, I would argue further that it may have been detrimental to QualComm itself. This would have given other companies to then flagrantly violate patents with impunity. And this has the potential of breaking the very business model that QualComm thrives on.

2. Verizon, one of the biggest backers safely navigated itself out with a pact with BroadCom. This would give the big V an advantage over its CDMA competitor, Sprint and an army of phones to put up at least a semblance of fight against the iPhone.

3. It is clearly a fight between two industry heavy-weights which does not assume any national level importance. The government clearly did not buy the arguments regarding emergency calls. And the Verizon move served as enough precedence that a work-around was possible if the parties involved negotiate fair. It is not a Greek mythological war for the Gods to take sides.

The sequel talks about the implications for both parties.