Nokia Keeps Its Friends Close…
…and its enemies even closer. Nokia has been an ardent Qualcomm competitor ever since Adam, refusing to use Qualcomm’s chips even in Nokia CDMA phones. This has cost them share in the CDMA market, since their own chips have had performance issues. Now, in the midst of a Nokia campaign to win CDMA market share, Verizon has announced surprisingly that Nokia will offer the Qualcomm BREW platform on devices for the US market. The reasons are clear: Verizon is a huge handset customer with a strong commitment to BREW. Nokia can either burn-in the BREW functionality, or lose sales to Verizon. It probably doesn’t hurt that QCOMM offers terminal manufacturers the platform for free…did those guys go to the Redmond School of Business with a major in Trojan Equitation?
