Nokia has long struggled when it comes to market share in the CDMA market, which has hurt its prospects in the North American market. Now it it teaming up with Sanyo to form a new global company comprised of their CDMA mobile phone businesses. Nokia hopes that the combination of its world-leading brand, its demand supply expertise and its presence in the entry-level CDMA market will be a good combination with Sanyo, which has strengths in mid-range and high-end CDMA handsets and has strong relationships with CDMA operators in Japan and North America. Yet Sanyo's market share in CDMA is small.
Nokia has made a number of missteps when it comes to the CDMA market. It would be in a much better position today had it used chipsets from Qualcomm rather than struggling to build its own because it had a number of quality issues early on. Analysts had also hoped the company would purchase Qualcomm's handset division in the late 1990s. Kyocera purchased it instead. Ultimately, Nokia may wind up using Qualcomm's chipsets after all since Sanyo uses them. We'll see if this move is drastic enough for Nokia to gain more share in CDMA.
For more about the joint venture between Nokia and Sanyo:
- read this article from Dow Jones