<If Q patents were gonna get beat, it would have happened before ericy capitulated.>
On this note, and as a way thank the person most responsible for my staying in QCOM when I was advised to sell my position in early February, I post the following.
From the January, 1999 Gilder Technology Report, beginning on page 7:
QUALCOMM:
"Meanwhile, as you may have all noticed, Qualcomm is provoking the usual clueless coverage in the press, which prompts queries galore to [The Gilder Group]. Is the company truly "desperate," as the Wall Street Journal opined? Can Ericsson and the EU truly capture the next generation of broadband wireless and swipe CDMA from Qualcomm merely by shuffling papers at standards bodies, repurposing old TDMA patents, and in general raising the noise level in wireless way above the signal? I gather you want to know. If you are a faithful reader of this Report, you grasp that in the end the best technologies, executed most competently, nearly always prevail."
Gilder then goes on in a number of paragraphs to recount the history and current status of the IP/standards battle with the ITU, in the process debunking the arguments of the anti-Q forces. He concludes the piece with these two paragraphs.
"Any way you cut it, the decision by ETSI, the European telecom standards body, to choose any kind of CDMA for the next generation of GSM is a huge victory for Qualcomm. The pretense that it's Ericcson's W-CDMA cannot conceal the Qualcomm concepts that make it possible: rake receivers, soft handoff, power control. The anti-competitive edict by the EU has been challenged by the US Government.....
Hey, throw me into the briar patch! This is where Qualcomm has thrived for more than ten years. The only difference is that in the past the US State Department endorsed GSM as a standard, and Qualcomm was a tiny startup with no allies at all and few revenues. Nonetheless, the power of its CDMA and entrepreneurial boldness has made it a $3.3 billion company, quadrupling revenues over the last three years and prevailing against all the powers and principalities of the telecomm establishment. Generation 3? One way or another, a piece of cake."
While the above speaks for itself, re-reading it reminded me of the importance of the Ericcson settlement. ERICY was the big kahuna in the fight against QCOM's IP and they have capitulated. Isn't this what Gregg Powers (and others) has been saying, the "fat lady has sung." |
