Where did Ericsson go wrong?
Rating: Hasn’t promoted HSDPA properly
By Tony Dennis
I’ve been mulling over the reasons behind Ericsson’ spectacular fall from grace having managed to shave something like
25 per cent off its share price. The company has laid the blame fairly and
squarely on the fact that it underestimated the possible consequences of market
dynamics. In other words, it failed to ship as many 3G network upgrades as it
had anticipated to network operators in North America and Europe.
Let’s be honest here, what we are talking
about is HSDPA – the technology which enables data to be delivered at speeds of
around 1.4 Mbit/s to 3.6 Mbit/s – depending on whom you believe. Even at the
slowest speed that’s still a Godsend for those wanting to utilise 3G/W-CDMA for
delivering content.
But where’s the demand for HSDPA? Ordinary
people haven’t heard of it so why on Earth would they go into a retail store
and specifically ask for an HSDPA enabled handset? And if they don’t do so,
then there’s no incentive for operators to pay Ericsson for expensive software
upgrades to their existing 3G kit in order to provide such a capability.
On the one hand, the industry seems to have
learnt from the lessons provided by WAP whereby the technology was promoted but
the benefits weren’t. The opposite has happened with HSDPA which has been
sub-summed by the likes of Ericsson into HSPA. What the industry needs to do is
come to an agreement and call HSDPA something like Superfast 3G as O2 does. Or perhaps a bit more honestly by
naming it What-we-promised-to-give-you-with-3G-in-the-first-place. I mention
this because I suddenly realised that both the handsets I’d seen last night at
the Nokia Music Store launch actually support HSDPA. But was this benefit
mentioned to me? No, it was not. Talk about missed opportunities.
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