Friday should be interesting:
The company's largest source of revenue is the licensing of these technologies to wireless companies. Tilden says,
"Today, Interdigital has 21 TDMA licensees, who have contributed about $250 million to $260 million in revenue."
Tilden explains that the nature of Interdigital's TDMA revenue flow is changing. In the past, licensees generally paid their royalties in a lump sum, which usually included a deposit toward future royalties.
As the deposits run out, licensees are required to pay a new recurring stream of royalties going forward.
"That revenue stream is just beginning to grow," says Tilden. "We will get in to more specifics when we announce
earnings on Friday."
Comments:
1) From $100,000 a quarter in 1998 to $2.9 million in the 9/99 quarter, that's "just beginning" or an early trend.
2) The cell phone of the future is expected to have only 5 chips: RF transmitter, RF receiver, IF (intermediate frequency) section, digital baseband procesor, and an integrated power controller. IDC is already demoing its second generation BCDMA system-on-a-chip.
IDC should be more forthcoming about this part of their developmental effort if it is not part of the Nokia confidentiality agreement. There is a great amount of thinking aloud going on in the chip business regarding the merits of SOC (system on a chip) and SiP (system in a package). Texas Instruments' major DSP annoucement next week (2/22) should be something to watch given that its DSPs are in close to 70% of all cell phones and also considering the announcements they have made recently in the areas of power management and mixed signal integration. |
