Nokia’s Ditching CDMA

From my point of view, Nokia clearly is a prominent brand at Cingular and, to a lesser extent, T-Mobile. Nokia hardly makes a presence in Sprint, Verizon, and other CDMA carriers I have seen, and even so, it’s little more than a “send-and-end” phone (i.e. to make and receive calls). Does this mean Nokia has failed in the CDMA market? This article in Business Week Online talks about Nokia and Sanyo’s upcoming joint venture to make CDMA handsets and the reasons these two players are joining up. In short, two not-so-large CDMA handset makers are teaming up to try and take on other manufacturers playing in that space, which includes big names like LG, Samsung, and Motorola.

Nokia has been known to divest itself of “unprofitable” businesses before, as shown on Nokia’s Divestments page. This isn’t quite a divestment, since presumably they will partially own the joint-venture and their name will still be on the phones somewhere. Even so, I have to agree, this seems like typical Nokia.