iSync and Samsung?

[New Guy]

Curious if anyone has had any luck using iSync with a Samsung cell phone, specifically the SCH-a530 from Verizon? I am due for a new cell phone and like the a530 from Verizon but want to make sure that is compatible with iCal and Address Book first.

I checked the iSync compatibility page and there is no mention of Samsung. There is no mention of iSync on Samsung's website either.

There is a USB adapter available for the phone and the salesman at the Verizon store said he thinks it should work. He didn't sound too sure of himself though.

Any help would be appreciated.

Craig

 

[iJon]

Re: iSync and Samsung?

Originally posted by New Guy
Curious if anyone has had any luck using iSync with a Samsung cell phone, specifically the SCH-a530 from Verizon? I am due for a new cell phone and like the a530 from Verizon but want to make sure that is compatible with iCal and Address Book first.

I checked the iSync compatibility page and there is no mention of Samsung. There is no mention of iSync on Samsung's website either.

There is a USB adapter available for the phone and the salesman at the Verizon store said he thinks it should work. He didn't sound too sure of himself though.

Any help would be appreciated.

Craig

nope your out of luck. the salesman probably doesnt know anything. all he heard whas sync and computer. so he told you about the usb cable. i became really good friends with my local ATT salesman and i went and showed them salling clicker and how isync worked with the t68i. all they could say is that i should work at ATT, because i knew more about the phones and plans than they did.

iJon

 

[New Guy]

nope your out of luck.

Sorry for needing clarification but are you saying that you know that it will not work. Or are you just lamenting the general lack of knowledge regarding Macs in the cell phone industry.

I am surprized by the lack of cooperation between Apple and Samsung. Especially after Apple invested in Samsung's LCD sector a few years back. Hmmph . . .

Thanks iJon.


Craig

 

[HaHaRich!]

I can tell you it won't work on any Mac out right now. The *ONLY* USB/iSync support is through Motorola phones, because they use the same sync technology in a large number of their phones (and Motorola makes the G4). I have a Samsung n400 that I use every day to get my 900 Mhz iBook online, and am also disappointed by the lack of iSync/USB/Samsung support. Sony Erricson was supposed to come out with a Sprint bluetooth compatible phone, but last I heard, they pulled the plug on that, too, so I'm doubly darned for my guilty iSyncing pleasures.

 

[New Guy]

I can tell you it won't work on any Mac out right now.

Thanks HaHaRich! You confirmed what I thought . . . but I am stil holding out some hope for a fix

Craig

 

[Lanbrown]

Originally posted by HaHaRich!
Sony Erricson was supposed to come out with a Sprint bluetooth compatible phone, but last I heard, they pulled the plug on that, too, so I'm doubly darned for my guilty iSyncing pleasures.

CDMA is a very small market compared to GSM.

 

[ima_pseudonym]

Originally posted by Lanbrown
CDMA is a very small market compared to GSM.

Globally, yes. In the u.s., no.

What is weird about the SE thing, is that the bluetooth cdma phones were done and had completed (or at least very nearly completed) testing by Sprint and Verizon. Roll out was imminent. Then, just before launch, SE announces no future development of cdma, causing sprint and verizon to reconsider whether or not they want to launch the current batch of phones.

Why not hold off that announcement for a month or two until the phones you have stocked in warehouses are in the market place, and then announce that you won't make any new ones?

 

[Lanbrown]

In the US, GSM/TDMA has around half the market, as does CDMA. iDen is the smallest of the three. CDMA has less then 14% of the world user base.

In the US, largest carrier is Verizon, which uses CDMA. The second and third largest is Cingular and AT&T Wireless, which are both TDMA/GSM, based, Sprint at number four with CDMA and T-Mobile with GSM at number 5. If you add all of the TDMA and GSM subscribers together, they will be the same if not more then CDMA subscribers. Within a few years time, TDMA will no longer be offered from Cingular or AT&T Wireless. Both should have their GSM networks near 100% by the end of the year. Even the other 24 carriers in the US plans to offer GSM service, if not already, by the end of next year. CDMA will only continue to grow smaller. The CDMA costs are very high as vendor interoperability is virtually nonexistent. With GSM, one phone can be sold for use virtually anywhere in the world, which is not the case with CDMA. Then you have CDMA and W-CDMA, which are not compatible with each other.

 

[ima_pseudonym]

Originally posted by Lanbrown
In the US, GSM/TDMA has around half the market, as does CDMA. iDen is the smallest of the three. CDMA has less then 14% of the world user base.

As I said, cdma has only a small share of the global market, but does not have only a small share of the U.S. market (I don't think 50% counts as small).

I'm not questioning SE's decision to pull out of the cdma market, it may very well be more cost-effective for them. I am only questioning the timing of the announcement of their decision: *after* developing the only bluetooth capable cdma phones, running them through testing, and stocking warehouses with them; but *before* the carriers actually released them. That just seems dumb.

 

[Lanbrown]

At of the end of last year (2002), here is the market share that the CDMA carriers have:
33.3%, that is all of the customers from Verizon and Sprint, CDMA, analog and anything else they have. I will not include Nextel in the TDMA/GSM group even though Nextel uses iDEN/TDMA. The GSM/TDMA carriers include AT&T Wireless, Cingular and T-Mobile; they have 37.3% of the market. Nextel has 7.5 and the rest are the other 24 or so carriers in the US that offer analog, CDMA, TDMA and GSM.

Year to year TDMA/GSM growth is 57% compared to 19.4% for CDMA.

The CDMA market share is shrinking.

If you ever dealt/worked with CDMA, you would see how well it is setup. Add a lot of sarcasm there. The CDMA carriers are getting pinched money wise, as CDMA is more costly to run. The vendor and carrier relationship is very stressed; they may have decided to drop them because of all the hassle involved.

 

[ima_pseudonym]

I'm confused. You keep throwing numbers as if you are disagreeing with me, but all I ever said was that cdma was not currently a small portion of the current u.s. market (which I still stand by even if they *only* have 33%), and that the timing of SE's announcement was stupid (and that has nothing to do with the future relative growth rates).

Fine, it makes more sense for SE to not develop any new cdma phones for the u.s. (even though, as I understand it, they will still be selling cdma phones in other markets - like korea).

But why after already doing all of the designing, sitting through all of the testing with verizon and sprint, and actually making a significant quantity of the phones, why choose to announce that you won't design any new phones right before the phones were about to be made available to customers, causing the providers with whom you had already reached agreements to pull back from selling phones that you have already built.

Originally posted by Lanbrown
At of the end of last year (2002), here is the market share that the CDMA carriers have:
33.3%, that is all of the customers from Verizon and Sprint, CDMA, analog and anything else they have. I will not include Nextel in the TDMA/GSM group even though Nextel uses iDEN/TDMA. The GSM/TDMA carriers include AT&T Wireless, Cingular and T-Mobile; they have 37.3% of the market. Nextel has 7.5 and the rest are the other 24 or so carriers in the US that offer analog, CDMA, TDMA and GSM.

 

[New Guy]

Would Verizon switching from CDMA to GSM be akin to . . . say, Apple switching from RISC to CISC/486?

In the end though (seeing as I am not currently an extensive world traveler or mobile office type salesman) if Verizon offered me a nice, small phone with iSync (I've heard bad things about the T720 and they no longer offer the V60i) I would be a happy customer.

Currently their service/coverage (in my area at least) is excellent. But their phone selection is lacking.

 

[Lanbrown]

CDMA is basically dead. 33% basically is a small portion, smaller then GSM/TDMA and the same size as the rural carriers that basically offer all of the technologies. Because the CDMA carriers are penny pinching trying to compete with GSM that actually costs less. If you go with CDMA, you are basically locked into one vendor for the switch and the site equipment. When it comes to phones, GSM handsets are cheaper and the CDMA carriers want to pay the same price for a phone that costs more to produce. They also want replacement phones for free as well and other perks. After all was said and done, SE was probably better off not selling them at all in the US and taking the loss now rather then every quarter.

The carrier handles the testing.

 

[ima_pseudonym]

So the only way for a manufacturer to sell cdma phones in the u.s. is to sell them at a loss? Yeah that sounds right, maybe someone should tell lg and samsung and moto about this.

So verizon/sprint want to buy the phones at a low price, and want defective phones to be replaced. Given that the r&d money for the t608/606 is already spent, and that a bunch of the phones have been made, surely SE would have made some money selling the phones (even for 2 cents apiece), compared with just scrapping them. I still don't see how it would not have been better for SE to announce its decision to not design any new phones *after* they began selling the ones they had already done.

I don't care how much cdma is "dying," look at the coverage maps for say Verizon vs T-Mobile, and tell me there isnt a substantial market for cdma cell phones.

I'm glad Apple has managed to continue to make a profit selling computers (that cost more to produce) to a 5% market share, even though a lot of people demand to pay the same as for a low-end wintel box.

 

[Lanbrown]

Moto is doing so well too. They have a problem with the PowerPC processors and their phones. They were the number 1 phone manufacturer before digital; now look at them. As soon as digital hit, they were near the bottom.

The CDMA companies want phones comparatively proceed to GSM phones. Since GSM has more market share, 86% or so globally, the R&D is divided over a larger user base because they sell more phones, which also decrease the cost of the components because of the higher volume. So to get a CDMA phone with the same technology is going to cost more, the CDMA carriers don't like this and want cheaper phones.

If SE sold that phone now, it will be obsolete within a year. So they may never see a profit from that phone in the US and why not take the hit now rather then every quarter.

There isn't a substantial market. Most of the rural areas are covered by third parties and they already or will offer TDMA, GSM and CDMA. Right now they all offer TDMA and CDMA along with analog. By the end of the year, GSM coverage will be much greater and by the end of next it will be the same as CDMA as all rural carriers will offer GSM roaming. 2005 will see analog switched off, which most of the CDMA phones are capable of using. Just because the coverage map shows coverage, it does not mean CDMA coverage. You will see Sprint and Verizon in a pinch very soon. The per minute cost of a CDMA call is higher then that of a GSM. That means that AT&T Wireless, Cingular and T-Mobile can charge the same price for a plan as the Verizon and Sprint and make more money, or they could attack them with lower cost plans, Sprint and Verizon will not be able to match it.

T-Mobile is also the smallest national player. Use Cingular or AT&T Wireless to compare it with Verizon. AT&T and Cingular are working together with coverage. They are building sites along interstates so they don't have to rely on rural carriers for coverage, thus reducing the roaming. Cingular also uses T-Mobile for coverage where they don't. AT&T Wireless has roaming agreements with over 20 carriers.

GSM/TDMA market share is going up, while CDMA is going down.

 

[ima_pseudonym]

Originally posted by Lanbrown
Since GSM has more market share, 86% or so globally, the R&D is divided over a larger user base because they sell more phones, which also decrease the cost of the components because of the higher volume. So to get a CDMA phone with the same technology is going to cost more, the CDMA carriers don't like this and want cheaper phones.

If SE sold that phone now, it will be obsolete within a year. So they may never see a profit from that phone in the US and why not take the hit now rather then every quarter.

Why? because as you said the R&D cost is high, and since that is already spent, they might as well sell them and (maybe) reduce the amount of money lost?

Just because the carriers want them for less, doesn't mean they have to sell them for less - its ultimately the customer's decision how much they want to spend for a phone, and there are a number of people who are willing to pay a premium for a bluetooth phone and who live in markets where no bluetooth phones are currently offered.

The phone may be obsolete in a year, but given the paucity of the handset choices for cdma, it could remain a popular choice for 2 or 3 years. Hell, people are still buying moto 720's.

There isn't a substantial market. Most of the rural areas are covered by third parties and they already or will offer TDMA, GSM and CDMA.

So now the 33% of the *current* market that Verizon and Sprint hold is not significant? Huh? I don't know how many cell phone users there are overall, but we are talking about *millions* of customers here.[/B][/QUOTE]

GSM/TDMA market share is going up, while CDMA is going down.

I repeat, I am not questioing long-term decisions. Maybe this is true. Maybe cdma will drop off the face of the earth in two years. Some people argue that cdma's 3g network is/will be better than gsm, but I will go along with you for the sake of discussion.

I am not questioning SE's long term decision. All I am questioning is their current plans with the current phones that they have already developed.

I think this has gone far enough, though, so I'm done.

 

[Lanbrown]

It might reduce the losses, but losses nonetheless quarter after quarter. Companies like to take one big loss in one quarter then some each quarter. Sprint/Verizon have less than 50 million customers, which includes analog. Before you say who uses analog, there are plenty of users; alarm systems, on-star, some point of sale terminals, etc all do. There is nearly 1 billion mobile phones out there. The GSM/TDMA side has around 800 million of those. SE can sell one phone that has multi-language support and can be used by nearly everyone of those 800 million users. The same cannot be said for the CDMA side.

There are two sides to the network, the data and then the voice portion. W-CDMA is where the data will end-up. The CDMA that is used here is not W-CDMA and they are not compatible.

What experience do you have with mobile technology and carriers?

 

[ibookin']

This is where I stand on the whole GSM vs. CDMA issue:

Here in the U.S., there are a lot more CDMA areas than there are GSM. Look at coverage maps for Verizon and Sprint and then look at coverage maps for ATT/Cingular/T-Mobile. Companies like Sprint and Verizon have a huge amount of money invested in CDMA, and switching over to GSM networks would not be a good option for them.

Also, in the U.S., CDMA rules the data world. GPRS data can do about 50-60Kbps max, whereas CDMA 1xRTT can do 144Kbps max. Both of these technologies are still in their infancy here, but currently CDMA is the fastest option for cell phone data. This is also a free service on Verizon plans that only uses your minutes.

Basically, I think that CDMA is better right now, but that when GSM gets more coverage and gets data speeds up then the GSM providers will get my business. It also helps that GSM service seems to be a lot cheaper than CDMA.

 

[Texan]

CDMA

This argument reminds of arguments I heard during the transition from analog to digital cellular. Some argued that there were many more analog phone users and basestations, so one should stick with analog phones!

If CDMA is so bad, then why is GSM/GPRS going to be replaced by W-CDMA in the next few years? AT&T is already conducting trials of W-CDMA in several markets. That great GSM/GPRS SE phone will be a dinosaur...

True, W-CDMA and CDMA2000 (which is what Sprint and others use to deliver 3G services) are not compatible. But, they both use code division multiple access! Primarily because more users can effectively share the same limited spectrum.