Maurice,
I'm now convinced that since the depths of this antimonopoly fanaticism seems so ingrained in people, that Qualcomm will has seriously limited potential.
I don't think that's the case at all. The anti-Microsoft sentiment has more to do with the business tactics, less with their market share, revenue, profits, or whether or not they are a monopoly or not.
Microsoft's business tactics were, in short, nasty. It's like the MSFT management dropped out of kindergarden in rush to make money at any price. They missed out on great things you learn there, like how to be polite, how to play fair, that you are supposed to flush.
I am not sure if you read any computer press. If you do, you would probably know about some of the extremes of MSFT behaviour was keeping journalist on payroll on whose "independent" judgement people (the kindergarden graduates) relied on, a bunch of Microsoft employees were paid to frequent BBSs and newsgroups, (places where PC users helped other PC users exchanged information, offered help and advice) and there, the MSFT hacks practice ruthless slash and burn campaign of FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) about their competitors. These MSFT employees of course hid their affiliation and pretended to be just regular users offering advice.
If you ever witnessed any of this, it would make you sick. You would have a lone person offering his opinion or experience to other readers, and he would be attacked by a pack of MSFT guys, some of them with multiple identities. If you hang around for a while, you would start to suspect what was going on, but you were never sure. You know there is this "40 million Frenchmen can't be wrong" (or whatever).
Anyway, most of this stuff came to surface (without much fanfare) eventually. If you heard loud smacking sounds all the way to NZ, it was sound of people smacking their foreheads here in the US saying "Damn, that's what was going on"
You compare QCOM and MSFT a lot. But in fact they are so different, almost a world apart.
QCOM management maintained the highest level of integrity throughout the history of the company, even while facing life and death kind of adversity from ERICY and all the anti CDMA crowd.
BTW, ERICY, Frezza and the rest of the crowd are just apprentices in MSFT school of management, communications and PR.
It's great to see the good guys (QCOM) win, but the sad thing is there are fewer and fewer of the good guys out there. The 2 Bills (Gates and Clinton) have polluted the public discourse so much that it may take a generation to clean it up.
They are resented not for making it to the top, but for the way they got there.
Joe |
