CDG : you can't beat demographics

The CDMA Development Group announced on november that the 200M 1x subscriber mark had been reached last september. And that EV-DO claimed 2.2M subs within 3 months to reach 18 M overall (20 M by year end). A far cry from W-CDMA's 35M, but "the broadband solution equivalent to 1xEV-DO will not be commercial until 2006". So HSDPA is the real competitor to EV-DO now... Which release are we talkin about, doc J ? Calling HSDPA the competitor instead of joining the band - as a few CDMA players will do - doesn't look like a smart move to me. If you agree with CDG's definition of 3G, CDMA is already 73% "3G" while GSM only stands at 2% : there are over 1.5 bn GSM fellas out there, and CDMA figures at the end of the year will be 20 M for EV-DO out of 220 M for cdma2000 out of 300 M for CDMA. You can't beat demographics.
The truth is cdma2000 is losing its momentum and 2005 was the year, as scheduled from the beginning*. Qualcomm definitely aren't playing fair these days ; they should focus on innovation trials instead of legal ones. The problem is, just like Microsoft, their vision of innovation focuses on the annihilation of competition. This can't last in an open environment.

* actually, back in 2001, I would say 2006 but W-CDMA can thank 3 for boosting its share of "voice"