> American CDMA was not competitve with internationally used GSM (well, no competition existed those days so America kept using it.)

That's a curious statement. In the US, CDMA (IS-95), TDMA (IS-54/136), and GSM all competed. It was in Europe that there was no competition.

WCDMA wasn't a great standard. WCDMA basically came from the GSM camp as a competitor to Qualcomm's CDMA2000/1xRTT/1xEV-DO.

Qualcomm's CDMA had more capacity than TDMA and GSM, soft handoffs, and importantly in America the phones would also support AMPS (analog) networks that provided rural coverage while networks were being upgraded (and the 35km coverage limit of GSM may have been impactful in flat, rural areas of the US - it's easy to underestimate how much of the US is rural). Qualcomm's user-equipment was also better and it's still king today.

Qualcomm also often provided a more pragmatic option for carriers. Upgrading a network with 1xEV-DO meant carving out 2.5MHz. Upgrading a network with GSM's 3G standard (WCDMA) meant carving out 10MHz. If you're a carrier that's facing capacity issues and only has 30-40MHz, that means carving out a huge chunk of space to upgrade. You need to start getting new handsets into people's hands fast. Worse, while being able to carry voice and data over the same system is great in theory, it meant that as carriers were upgrading their networks over 5 years, your new 3G phone might be placing a call via a tower that's farther away than a GSM tower or you might be stuck on a marginal 1900MHz 3G connection while an 850MHz GSM connection would be stronger. Qualcomm's data-only approach meant that customers still had the same, reliable voice connection they always loved. Upgrading from GSM to WCDMA meant getting a phone that would be connecting to an under-construction "beta" network that often didn't have the coverage of the older GSM network - but your phone would hold onto a really marginal WCDMA signal and you'd get a bad experience. For a carrier like AT&T to launch low-band WCDMA meant carving out nearly half of its low-band spectrum for WCDMA - and in a suburban/rural country like the US where 1900MHz coverage was pretty sparse at the time, that meant reducing capacity a lot or waiting until most people had WCDMA phones. Verizon, on the other hand, could simply 1xRTT (slower data) areas if they launched 1xEV-DO at 1900MHz while still offering the same solid voice service - or they could carve out 10% of their low-band spectrum for data. Both of those offer a way better path forward for both the carrier and the users.

LTE and 5G NR have moved to OFDMA, but CDMA was better than the TDMA/GSM (and iDEN) networks that were the other choices in many respects. It was more efficient, but I'd say a big part of it was that Qualcomm just nailed the implementation. WCDMA was just ill-fated, but given that so many countries were going to adopt WCDMA regardless, it didn't really matter. It was the successor to GSM and so most of the world would end up using it. Release 99 with its 384kbps data rate felt a bit like a joke compared to 1xEV-DO's 2.45Mbps (while having smaller channel sizes).

I wouldn't say that CDMA wasn't a good technology. It was a better technology than GSM or TDMA. It was more efficient and Qualcomm's CDMA provided a superior experience. WCDMA was a bit garbage at first. HSDPA improved downloads and HSUPA later improved uploads and HSPA+ further improved things and did show that wider channels had some good offerings - but it was a really rough transition. Plus, it was just really inconsistent and usually had higher pings than EV-DO (even if it'd perform better on a speed test). While AT&T and T-Mobile rolled out HSPA+, Verizon rolled out LTE and once again they'd have the benefit of the rock-solid CDMA voice network they'd been building for so long and a far better data option (while AT&T had upgraded from TDMA to GSM and GSM alongside WCDMA and now would need LTE as well).

That's not to say GSM/WCDMA didn't have some advantages. Handsets were cheaper and you weren't beholden to Qualcomm so much. The 5MHz channels would have a bit more longevity, but arguably if Verizon hadn't chosen LTE Qualcomm would have continued evolving their proprietary standard more (and in hindsight I think anyone would say that WCDMA should have supported smaller channel sizes to accommodate an easier launch).

The allegations in the trial were often related to Qualcomm's practice of using patent royalties to bolster its chips division whose sales would then bolster its ability to build-up it's patent portfolio whose royalties then boosted its chips division... Qualcomm wasn't dominating the world with 2nd class technology. They were using their first-class technology to keep reinforcing their dominant position. If you're European and your experience with "CDMA" is "WCDMA", I can see how you might think poorly of it. If you're an American, you could see Qualcomm's CDMA being so much better than GSM and WCDMA. I think it's also likely that a good bit of LTE's success has come because of Qualcomm's work on it. Qualcomm definitely wasn't pushing second-rate stuff. The GSM camp pushed a half-baked WCDMA that used some of Qualcomm's technology, but that Qualcomm wasn't really backing (hoping that people would choose their proprietary CDMA 1xEV-DO system instead). With 3G technologies, everyone adopted CDMA-style systems (whether Qualcomm's or the GSM camp's). With 4G technologies, everyone went with OFDMA. However, implementation matters and along with allegedly anti-competitive business practices, Qualcomm is also pretty great at creating top-tier wireless stuff. They threw their weight behind LTE and have continued to create the best LTE chipsets out there.