Dr Bill - Some investors, however, falsely believe that because third and fourth generation wireless standards will be based on CDMA, therefore Qualcomm will be the chief beneficiary. But Qualcomm's technology is narrowband CDMA while most of the world will adapt third and fourth generation technology which is wideband CDMA, a much different animal.
You do yourself no favors with that article. Have you read the patents? I concede that many of Qualcomm's patents are what I refer to as Standards 'Claim Stakes', which are pretty narrowly focused on a particular standard, and will be of limited utility when applied to other standards. However you should really read Qualcomm's basic patents on power control and soft handoff. These are broad, and it is impossible to do mobile cell CDMA without them. Period. There is no mention in them of bit rate or hertz, and power control and soft handoff are, if anything, more important in wideband than in narrowband.
As for IDC's patents, they have some good patents, but nothing I would say is even remotely as valuable (this is not rocket science - what is the grand total of royalties they have collected? Qualcomm collects more in two quarters). Most especially I would say that some of IDC's patents in TDMA, on which investors are counting, would have a tough time in court when not in a one-sided (ex-parte) system like the US PTO. Many 're-validated' patents don't survive court challenges, and I would say that many of IDC's TDMA patents fall into that category (although I never tried to look at all of IDC's TDMA patents, only some which Jim L. listed for me.).
Clark
PS Of course you could say I have an agenda, being a QCOM investor, but I have no possible agenda when it comes to TDMA, and with CDMA I've actually bought more as I delved more into the patent and technology. I always try to put the horse before the cart.
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