Once upon a time, Qualcomm was small enough that I thought I could just about know all there was to know. Now it is a monster, with links throughout the telecoms world. I'm really losing the total picture - well I have the overall idea, but huge details slip by me almost unnoticed now.
Which is a good sign, because it means there is a huge amount going on. Only 2 years ago, the whole thing had a question mark over it. It still has, but the question now is will the profits be great or simply obscene?
But your question was IDC. They seem to have some valid things going for them; Siemens and Samsung, have signed up for IDC's broader band CDMA. Broader than IS-95 CDMA.
The "paid out" IDC patents were not especially relevant and Qualcomm didn't believe they were liable, but decided to buy them off because the prospect of court delays and legal expenses were too great. Unbelievably [to me anyway], the legal expenses were about $9million and the payment to IDC only about $5million. Qualcomm might not be using anything of IDC's for all I know.
You shouldn't read the payout to IDC as being acknowledgement that IDC had something valuable to offer Qualcomm. They had the threat of court action and the costs due to delays. Not exactly a positive thing to offer somebody, but effective in extracting money at that time. Ericsson is stupidly trying the same trick now. Well, they are too late! IS-95 is out of the cage and rampaging. Ericsson can't slow it down with all the court action in the world.
IDC has broadband CDMA and I don't know of any B-CDMA that Qualcomm has been involved in, so it is probably other companies and IDC in that field. Ericsson is feinting in that direction, but they aren't totally stupid and I think Qualcomm will call their bluff.
Qualcomm doesn't want to use B-CDMA as far as I know.
I doubt that they are interested in buying IDC. I suspect that IS-95 will perform to expectations and will be used for cellphones and "Anita" notebook puters. Those are my nicknames for notebook computers with all the electronics built in, from tv, radio, GPS, web, cellphone, alarm clock, calculator, to normal computer functions.
Maurice |
