Why Wait for Nokia?
Aside from gaining access to exclusive features, or getting in early on the innovation curve, Eric Zimits, a general partner at Granite Venture Capital, predicts that carrier investments in hardware might become more common as carriers seek to exert added control over the component side of their business. He points to investments in femtocells as well as NTT DoCoMo’s recent decision to invest in Quantance, which offers a handset component to increase battery life. Zimits is an investor in Quantance and Percello, the T-Mobile-backed femtocell company. “It just seems to me that as carriers—especially wireless operators—look for a competitive advantage in the market, they should try to get proprietary access to key technologies instead of waiting for Nokia to take two to three years to figure it out and then sell it to all comers,” Zimits said. “The big change for the startup is they have to sell to the operators from Day One. They are hard organizations to navigate, but the payoff can be
