New Blog

not that anyone of you probably care that much but i have decided to separating my blogging activities. Here, at http://blog.almstroem.se, it'll be more personal opinions - like the State of China or traveling or something like that.

At davidalmstrom.com, I will be featuring more tech-related blogs, public opinions (like if of some reasons I will be featured in a newspaper or similar). I may cross-blog sometimes when it's relevant. So to all my people (5) in struggle, here's some pain medicine (Kirk Franklin, Looking for you) 

The End of a Saga - Nokia - Part II

The end is probably even closer than what you think. The latest changes in Nokia really makes me believe that the company is setup to be divided and sold off in three parts. It looks like it's the 80s corporate raiders who have taken over the company.

So what will happen?

Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) will be sold off if there is anyone willing to take them on and getting NSN into shape, reduce management and streamline the company do not seem to be an easy thing. I can only speculate that e.g. Samsung or ZTE might be willing to take on NSN in order to gain market share and market position but the outlooks are grim. I think NSN is really Nokia Board's biggest headache. It doesn't improve and there is no obvious buyer/investor to take them on. Maybe the Nokia to be is holding NSN only.

The S40/Mobile phone organization may be sold off to Huawei or ZTE who might be keen to capitalize on Nokia position in emerging markets and entry phones.

And the more I think of it, it starts to make sense for Microsoft to take over the smartphone team as Nokia killed the latest initiative of lower-cost smartphones aka Meltemi. With Nokia's IP and patent portfolio, both for phones and maps/location, it starts being good value for Microsoft who seems to be looking at Google and Apple's success more and more. A slimmed down product development company could then be of interest.

There are a few proof points further that supports the above scenario.

One of Nokia's strongest assets have been its channels and operator relationships but during H1 2012 the sales operations have been scaled down to a level where it's not an asset any more. More offices being closed and sales being centralized rather shows an attempt to streamline operations to avoid overlaps for anyone taking over operations. In South East Asia, only a small office in Singapore is maintained. Several sales offices in China has been closed as well.

Also reviewing the belated management changes, amongst a few good things (like getting rid of Niclas Savander and Mary McDowell) there is one in particularly that makes me confused and that's the appointment of Chris Weber  - his only international experience is from Canada… Nokia sales is 99% outside of the US, heavily driven by China, India and large emerging markets. Sales in US is, believe or not, actually decline. You thought it might be impossible given that Nokia hardly has any sales in US but still.. decreasing. Chris' latest gig was 15 years at Microsoft, Corporate VP for enterprise sales and marketing in US. Seems relevant to drive consumer business in India and China.

The foreclosure of Meltemi shows that management is not at all keen in developing its own platforms and stay independent. Instead, minimize investments in S40 to try to stay reasonable competitive and pray that Windows 8 will be a tremendous success, even in reaching low cost smartphone segments.  And Windows 8 has always been the end-game according Risto Siilasmaa, the Nokia chairman, but if so, why kill Symbian and MeeGo at that time in the way it was done. Should not that been done this year, maintaining sales for 2011 and 2012. Still, Symbian phones are selling better than windowphones ! I think Stephen Elop and the board still did not understand where the market was and was caught off-guard with two facts. 

The first one being that China and India no longer by second-grade or old products and that they are now part of a global community, so with the big splash news at MWC 2011, none of the dealers in China and India were particularly interested in promoting dead platforms and products. The launch of MeeGo and N9 is totally not understandable in that light.

The second one was the fast dropping prices of Android and the impact that had on sales of Nokia's S40 phones, which looks outdated - particularly in terms of downloadable apps and that the Ecosystem also matters in those parts of the world.

Nokia will be the subject of many case studies and Ph.D reports in an unprecedented case of destroyingroying maximum shareholder value in shortest possible time. Oh, the guy to study who lead this downturn is the same who created this magnificent mobile phone company in the 90s. Jorma Ollila.

The Foreign Dilemma

The current Anti-Foreigner campaign is the strongest since US bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in 1999 and it is directly targeted at a foreign life-style rather than illegal immigrants. Clearly, there can not be that many spys who cheat chinese innocent woman and not that many that commits serious crimes, but the campaign is focused on those issues and it is becoming quite ugly.

Mandated by Public Security Bureau, the police targets Beijing primarily with Sanlitun (bar/restaurants area) and Wudakuo (university area with a lot of foreigners) in focus; the Ministry of Propaganda is on their feet. Most noticeable, Yang Rui's anti-foreign comments on weibo has spurred debates. Yang Rui leads Dialogue (CCTV9) since many years back, which is a program in English to stimulate dialogue between China and the rest of the world. But his comments rather displays an ugly attitude to the foreign trash that destroys China's purity. 

But why now? 

I have two thoughts and one could be that it is actually about illegal immigrants or visitors with doubtable visa. E.g. there are many younger people that is in China working on visitor's visa as they either can't find an employer or want to avoid paying taxes. Given the US campaign to clean out visa for chinese teachers, the campaign could be an action towards US to be more flexible.

More likely though, I think this an effort to get the focus away from internal affairs. The Bo Xilai scandal and the move away from leftish state-driven politics along with the escape of house-arrested dissident Chen Guangming have caused a lot of trouble with and for the Chinese leadership. Add that to ever-increasing issues with humongous corruption cases emerging now, there is not a very strong trust in the leadership - and with the new leadership soon to take place, they need peace and quietness to get into the office neatly. 

Quite often in the past, the leadership has then directed the discussion on external issues - be it Taiwan, Tibet, Japan or US. This time, the campaign fuels the anti-foreign sentiments where it has become more difficult to get visa and where the campaign is directed against illegal immigrants, it has strong a focus on bad behaviors by foreigners - that is not necessary illegal, just not nice.

Luckily though, it doesn't seems to affect daily life too much :) Here is a sunshine story with comments alike.

For more information, Anne Henochowicz wrote a great article in Foreign Policy. 

Changing Culture?

After being back for a months or so now, a few things strikes me as common amongst all culture and that is the need of being local. I guess you all heard about the 80s and 90s theme about Think Global - Act Locally - basically build global solutions and localize them for each market's need. Very much the foundation of Nokia's world dominance (and now also Apple's) but more and more that is becoming more uncommon.

A few other companies have shown a different route to success, which is the reverse - Think Locally - Act Globally; in the sense where local market requirements, opportunities or skills can create global opportunities. Not totally different but creates a different mindset of how to operate and run a business.

But surprisingly in the industry where I now operate (software development/outsourcing), the need to think and act locally is far stronger than I expected. And it does not really differ from Finland, Stockholm, Malmö, Oslo or Copenhagen. Whoever I talk to, the need to speak local language and reside locally is equally important despite the obvious advantage of off-shoring test and development work. For example, in Oslo, there are no free IT resources. Unemployments is close to zero and the cost of hiring or sourcing consultants locally are amongst the highest in the world. Still, the thinking is to hire locally.

I would have thought that the ever-increasing globally competition would force companies to further drive cost-reductions, productivity enhancements and shorten time-to-market. In the case of Norway, productivity per hour are the highest in the world but the output is not that high, given the few hours worked, which slows down deliveries.

What are the change drivers? Will it ever change or?

Another reflection is the constant need to complain about how limited their local community is and the dream of how exciting other cities (read Beijing, Hong Kong) are in comparison. Amazingly actually as both Stockholm and Oslo are quite interesting, though a bit expensive, but the grass is always greener on the other side.

Essingeleden

After being in Beijing for most of my working life, I thought I was used to extreme trafic conditions - like 2 hours from Nokia's office in BDA (Yizhuang) to go home around Worker's Stadium. A ride of about 25 km. And with the car explosion, where in 2010 more than half million cars where added, it is tough to keep building out roads.

Another example was Terminal 2 that was completed in 2002 after 4 years, but when it was opened it almost already ran out of capacity, so the huge Terminal 3 was projected and ready 5 years later, in 2008. It was impossible to forecast that tremendous growth in travelling during such a short time period. That's what hyper growth can do to you.

But what is Stockholm's excuse? Essingeleden (E4) goes from south of Stockholm, passing Kungsholmen around downtown to Norrtull where it heads northbound. In 2009, long long due, Vägverket (Swedish Road ministry) started a re-construction of the 8 km 'long' road. And it will take a whopping 6 years! In Beijing a new airport is constructed in shorter time. When I came, 1997, 4th ring road in Beijing hadn't been started to be built. Now, there are both a 5th and 6th ringroad.

Now, I am not in civil engineer but why does it have to take 6 years?! The overall cost to society is probably far more than if the plans are forced to complete the road constructions in 3 years instead of 6. The pollution created during the rush hour, the time lost for the people spending all this extra time in trafic, day in and day out for 6 years. I doubt that it can be an overall benefit to spend more than 6 years.

And while I am on it, extending the Blue subway line to Nacka is probably a good idea (I have no opinions in the matter) but that it should take 10-12 years to complete? To do things too fast sometimes is not good, but why that it has to be slow? Note, I do not compare the decision process between Beijing and Stockholm only the implementation of decisions taken.

Back In Da Jing

Back in Beijing again and this post is not about technology, nor about my return to Sweden but rather about what really annoys me in Beijing and still really gets to me when I come back to Beijing after only five weeks. These things really bothers me and as time goes by, things will change and my memories fade, but still.

The smell and the smog - see the two pictures to the left - bothers me a great deal. First thing you feel when you get out of the plane is the "Beijing Smell" - the smell of burnt coal and the pollution is a combination of China still using 75% coal to fuel its energy needs, the tripled number of cars in four years paired with a dysfunctional public transportation and limited road infrastructure (in all fairness, who could have foreseen this tremendous growth in cars?) and a disability of understanding how to operate a car in order to drive smoothly. 

Clearly, this will improve - as public transports are being built out and roads improve and people's knowledge increase (often aligned with traffic tickets). And China has an ability to gets things done, when they get it.

Secondly, though not right in my face, it is blatantly obvious that the only thing that matters is me, me and me and that I get more money, can show off my success and brag about all the money I get. This creates respect among equals and the less fortunated. Unfortunately, it comes at a price and the price is that nothing else matters. The China Law Blog reported (unscientifically) that the number of violent cases in business have tripled and the murder of Mike Hayward is just another example thereof. KIds that dies or gets seriously injured because milk is tainted with Melanin is another example. And the list just gets longer and longer day by day.

Thirdly, the foreign Beijingers.. I do not know what it is with them and it is not true for all of them (us) but some of us behave utterly arrogant and unpleasant and display a view of racism that "these low-level chinese uneducated creatures" can not read their mind, understand their winks and most of all, appreciated and learn their superior use of the English Language. A lot of times, and I must say I also apply a great deal prejudice here, most of these guys are not able to score the type of job and salary they have in Beijing; nor get access to the restaurants and clubs in their home towns; nor pick up the girls and crowds. What I can't understand is the lack of appreciation, being in the country of opportunities, where they can afford everyday's luxury and appreciate the struggle that all of us has here (locals, migrants and immigrants). You see bad-ass behaviors at bars, at work, in taxis, at restaurants. It can be good to remember who are the guests here. Even if I lived in Beijing more than half of the population has, I still realize I am an outsider, a guest and will also be, but I have had my lowlights as well (I am not a saint)

In Sinica's podcast, The End of the Expat Package, you can here a nice analysis about the situation but the truth is just because you speak chinese (hey, 1.3B does) and that you are foreigner (hey, you are not the only one) does not mean you have a great future in China. I may not agree upon all their thoughts, but insightful indeed. Maybe time to be humble and integrate into the society.

The good thing is that things are achange and only time will tell but I have good hopes of China's future development.

The End of a Saga - Nokia

The last couple of days really seems to have put yet another nail into the coffin that represents the of Nokia (and Europe)'s dominance of the mobile phone industry. The end is near.

Three significant points of data:

1. The quarterly result where Nokia has managed to turn around a €300M profit to 1.3 billion in losses, but where the emerging markets really suffers. Global sales drops 40% and China a whopping 70% decrease in (true, Windowsphone just started to sell but still) YoY! 

However, the huge losses comes from Nokia-Siemens Networks, who been demoted to #3 (overtaken by Huawei) with a billion euro operating loss! That leaves the devices with an operating loss at 5% (or -€230M and €3 per phone).

2. The exodus of Nokia executives - lately Colin Giles had to leave, EVP Sales, which is not surprising given the horrible sales results but in all fairness, is he to be blamed?

What is worse is that Nokia's management (aka NLT) is now left with 'stars' like Niklas Savander in charge of Sales, Marketing and Production. And he has yet to deliver anything, whereby his further strengthened position is really questionable. Moreover, the NLT is basically brand new and I fear that Nokia has lost its Finnish roots, which would have been the foundation for any rebound. Never underestimate the finnish Sisu! It has taken Nokia back from the brink of bankruptcy before and help a country fend of Soviet Union in the winterwar 1939-40 and 1941-44.

7 of 11 in the NLT has been there for less than 18 months and half is non-finns (which is not necessarily a negative thing) 

And Windowsphone? Well, a lot of positive comments about the UI/UX but it has not translated into sales and Microsoft is really gunning for Windows 8 with tablets and smartphones, not 7.x, which leaves Nokia in no-mans-land for another year.

3. India going Android, where Reliance's deal with Google on committing to Android for the next two years shows that Nokia has lost its grip even in the emerging market. Nokia has been too late in addressing the need of low-cost smartphones (and the latest marketing pundits effort to rename S40 into a smartphone platform doesn't fool consumers or the market), which is now clearly visible in sales performance in China, India and also Africa. 

The BRIICA markets abandons Nokia! And as those are at the foundation of Nokia's rebound - with solid sales, great branding and the target for "Internet for the next billion", the very strategy itself, though the right thing, may prove at great risk with Nokia doing too late and too late.

Problems Started 2006

But the decline started long time ago, long time ago. And it was highlighted when Jorma Ollila resigned and promoted a bean-counter, Olli-Pekka Kallesvuo (OPK), to CEO. Sad to say, and this is quite common by many charismatic and successful business leaders, the appointment of a CFO to be the CEO was not the smartest move (it seems difficult for them to accept the fact they need to appoint a smarter, bolder successor to take the company to the next level instead of preserving existing). And, like the new leadership in China in 16th century, OPK could only preserve the business and maintain the strategy but not be able to see (or understand) or change the company to reflect the momentous changes that happened between 2006-2009, with the rise of Asian vendors (Samsung, LG, Huawei, ZTE) and the clear change of user preferences, introduced by Apple.

The results are bluntly obvious today, where Nokia has been kicked down from its #1 position both in terms of revenue and units shipped, posting a horrible billion euro quarterly loss. The mentality of being an underdog has to be reinforced but probably also a much needed adjustment of the organization will be required, quite similar to the steel-bath Ericsson undertook 10 years ago, shrinking for 150,000 employees to a mere 50,000 in one year.

Given what has happened and the state of the company, windowsphone and the competition, Nokia are destined to follow the route of Sony Ericsson and become a niche player, posting 10-15% market share in 2012 and maybe €10-12B revenues (please note, I am not a financial analysts, so revenues are just for wild guesses).

I have a real problem seeing what could make Nokia rebound into being a significant mobile phone player again, given the lack of strategy beyond mobile phones per se. The only good thing is that Nokia spotted the problems before it had a solid financial effect. Compared to Motorola and RIM, Nokia has already taken decisive measures to change strategy, reduce headcount and have a path to success. Let's see if that path leads to glory or misery.

Ericsson..

just quickly going to touch upon Ericsson.. the first industrial employer I had after graduating and spending 2 years as journalist and producer. Ericsson is one of these amazing companies that has a tremendous impact on the local countries development and efforts. In Finland, you have Nokia. In Gothenburg area, you have Volvo and in Stockholm (actually Sweden), you have Ericsson with all its spin-offs.

In Lund, we have a global centre of talents for baseband modem, which can be seen in the spin-offs from Ericsson: ST-Ericsson and Sony Mobile, where the of the R&D for these companies are base-band and radio in Lund. Huawei recently setup an R&D Center, headed by the former Ericsson-exec, Tord Wingren. Guess where? Lund...

The impact that Ericsson has in the Swedish industry and the world's telecommunications can not be under-estimated. The close co-operation with the former Televerket, with their genius chief engineer, late Östen Mäkitalo (whom I had the honor to meet just short time before his unexpected death), have led to today's revolutionary changes in how we communicate through the mobile phone. It was the 70's and 80's joint R&D between the two companies that commercialized the mobile phone telephony - first with NMT and later with GSM.

Silicon Alley in Stockholm, Kista has numerous R&D centers, university programs and is probably the largest concentration of skilled wireless engineers in the world.

I hope to get back more to Ericsson given the monumental impact they have on today's wireless industry and the local businesses in Sweden.

MyNewsDesk

Sweden, and Stockholm, has a lot of interesting startups. One of them is Mynewsdesk, which I never heard about before I became the Managing Director of Symbio Sweden. Well, I heard of them and noted the name but was not sure what it was until I started to investigate PR strategies to make Symbio more known in the Swedish market.

Mynewsdesk is one of these innovative cool Swedish startups, this time the serial entrepreneur is Kristofer Björkman, who has created a PR channel that makes it easier for both brands and journalist to follow what is relevant, sort of a closed social network.  Started in 2003, they got acquired 2008 by NHST (a norwegian publishing house) and now have offices in Sweden, Norway, Finland, UK and Singapore (soon US).

A good example of a Swedish startup. It will be interesting to see what Kristofer has in the pipe as a next startup (after MrJet and SF-Anytime)

The Return to Scandinavia

As of a month, I am back to Sweden, more precisely Stockholm and it will be quite a change. From being based in city/country that hosts the world's largest operators and service providers (China Mobile soon 700M subs, Tencent/QQ with a billion accounts and more than a half billion active accounts, Sina Weibo with more than 300 millions users for their twitter-like service) to Nordic countries with the same population of Beijing only and Stockholm, the home of Spotify, Ericsson, Investor, Electrolux and now me.

But the dynamics of the start-up community and the creative arising from the proximity to Royal University of Technology and Ericsson is quite amazing. There are a lot of interesting things happening that has global reach and attraction - Spotify, Wrapp, Videoplaza and many more - it makes me hope that the time I will spend supporting these types of companies and the all the others in Sweden through my role at Symbio Sweden will be quite exciting - though probably on a different scale of what was going on in China.

Nokia Qt Conferences Asia 2010

After the tremendous success of Nokia's Qt Developer Days 2010 that attract 1,000 people in Munich and 600 in San Francisco (Burlingame actually) and now we are gearing about for Qt Conferences in Asia. As we do not have the breadth and the access to developers as we have in US and Europe, we are shortening to a one day one session conference track instead of 2 days with 4-5 simultaneous tracks.

But we seem to be able to replicate the success. In Beijing, we have already closed registration after more than 400 people has signed up. In Japan, we are expecting easily 250 developers. In Taiwan and Korea, we will have about 150 each. In total, almost a 1,000 people are coming to our events in Asia.  If you manage to get a seat, you will learn a lot more about where Qt is going, what Qt can do and what MeeGo will do to the industry,

Go Qt, Go!

For more information:
Beijing
Taipei
Tokyo
Seoul

and all the kudos to Marie Reysset who single-handedly is trying to bring this together.

Driving the Third Industrial Revolution

The third industrial revolution will force companies like Nokia to let go, to break the traditional value chain where value has been created from within the firm to a co-creation process with consumers and other stakeholders. I think Nokia is well-positioned to leverage this upcoming change but it will be a painful process to change the mindset and collaboration mode.

I sat in and listened to Robin Teigland's presentation about the Third Industrial Revolution and where the Internet is going. Ms Teigland is an Associate Professor at the Center for Strategy and Competitiveness at the Stockholm School of Economics.

Teigland 3rd Industrial Revolution

View more presentations from Robin Teigland.

A quick comment, according to some Economic Historians, the industrial revolution really starts 40 years after break-through innovations. 40 years ago the Internet was born and 40 years ago we saw the first micro-electronic achievements. This leads to that we might be in the begin of the 3rd industrial revolution..

What got me going was the following comments about how Corporations are trying to control their destiny - and this also echoes the discussion about how an OEM e.g. Nokia can differentiate leveraging a real open source platform like MeeGo - and please follow my rationale (and find where the flaws are in my logic).

So, in the second industrial revolution, the industrial chain was focused on things like:

- separate work and private life

- roles and responsibilities appointed and supervised

- value created by firm's employee and firms are primary source of value creation

- competition is zero-sum game

But in the third industrial revolution, knowledge will rule and corporates able to leverage global sourcing of talents and knowledge working in a co-operative mode where products and services are defined and tested in real world environment.. Don't let Teigland's emphasis on Virtual Reality with avatar's dismiss what the key messages of her ideas are, as they are highly intriguing. And Facebook hires Cory Ondrejka, former CTO of Linden Labs (behind Second Life) is another sign of where social networks may be going.

Most, if not all companies today are clearly in the second phase, starting to explore what Teigland refer to as the second step in the 3rd Industrial revolution. Organized functionally or matrix-wise [1] to follow fairly strict rules of roles and responsibility to deliver result and create value for shareholders. If we continue with Nokia as an example, they are steered towards deliver mass-market low-cost handsets which results in a functional highly optimized cost-efficient organization.

And here's the million dollar question: do the companies have the guts to let go and drive the change to the third industrial revolution or are they going to stand by and see it happen before acting upon it?

And the consequences might be scary as the main implication will be to let go, stop controlling and rather influence and leverage what is happening in the extended ecosystem. When consumers and suppliers may enforce their opinions and knowhow already in the product creation stage - not just firms and consumer analysts pretending to listen to them, but they actually being involved creating the products with you, for you.

How is then the companies able to differentiate? How to keep the secret sauce hidden? Well, don't - that would not be the competitive strength in the upcoming Immersive Internet where moving from one way information spreading (early Internet) to sharing and participating (today's social networking) to co-creation and de-centralized social production (tomorrow's Immersive Internet) (check slide 9, don't know how to link to that one directly).

References:

1. Wikipedia on Organizational Structures

Google Mobile, Android and Open Source

Heaps of articles, blogs and videos etc. etc. etc. has already been written about this subject and i am not sure that i have anything to add in this. However, i think it is a truly interesting topic and i am not sure i completely understand why Google wants to create their own framework that will have some serious issues before it matures and reach a level where it can successfully compete.

If Google wants to go Mobile, which they already begun with search, gmail, etc., there are many ways to do so. If Google wants to address the vast market of India, China, South East Asia, Latin America, etc. where PCs are far from prevailing and Google is hardly known, going for a Linux-Java based operating system and framework is probably not the right move either. The cost factor for these phones will not be in sub-$100, at least for the foreseeable future.

Creating a framework from scratch, even with deep pockets like Google has, is not done overnite. The first version of Android SDK was just released in a pre-alpha release. Commercially, Android/Google hopes it is going to be released next summer (2008). However, Symbian and S60 with Nokia as a very strong backer and extremely in-depth knowhow about phones, spent 5-6 years before it become mature, fast and easy to use. Trolltech released Qtopia Phone Edition back in 2004 and it was based on a mature toolkit (Qt/E) and Trolltech recently released its 3rd generation of the platform, 3 years later. Microsoft spent thousands of people working closely with TI and Intel many many years and invest hundreds of millions of dollars, and many years. WinCE 6 is now in shipping phones and only after 4 generations of software, they seems to be closer to get it right. But the phones are still expensive and it is not only the royalties to Microsoft that makes it expensive - hardware, R&D and marketing are also factores to consider.

Throwing good and a lot of money may not always help. And I think that Google/Android will realize that soon. LGE, Samsung and Motorola will probably not invest the hundreds of people for 2-3 years to complete the platform. The Alliance will not do so either, many of the crucial software companies are not in there. So the question is, will HTC be able to do so? and risk their 8 years of close symbiotic relationship with Microsoft? i doubt that.

Then a quick philosophical touch about Open Source. This alliance seems rather to be canabalizing on Open Source, since Google is determinating the conditions that the alliance partners can participate. The software will partially be licensed under an Apache license but be heavily restricted by Google in trademarks, certification and other means - far from the spirit of open source. Furthermore, the open platform seems only to accept a version of Java for 3rd party apps, which is not always a great mean to stimulate applications - though Google is trying to buy a community.

N95 8G

hehe,
i just got a new Nokia N95 8G and i must say... it is good. Be it Symbian and S60, it is still extremely good.

It is fast, has a great screen, seriously improved performance on both startup, applications and feature performance. It has Mobile-TV with 3 providing some pretty good channels - more selection that i have at home with my cable network.

Most impressive is some of the additional features of improving the usability - such as the shortcut button that gets you into a 3D wheel with the latest used features and content. The GPS map function is great as well and works decent. The only thing missing is .. touchscreen. Being in China for 10 years now, i kind of get used to control the phone using my fingers.

The N95 8G will certainly fly high. I will at least continue flying and bring it with me to Korea, Japan, China, HK, Taiwan and Europe/US. Not that US has any clue what HSDPA means - the 3.5G modem makes it superfast in downloading emails, maps and browsing.