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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates

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To: mauser96 who wrote (24546)5/11/2000 2:38:00 PM
From: Mike Buckley  Read Replies (2) of 54805
 
Luke,

You're right that it's unusual, maybe never happened, that a component brand has taken on the strength of a device brand to the degree of Intel's microprocessors.

A QCOM ad campaign saying CDMA was better would be met by another saying exactly the same thing for GSM or whatever.The end result might be consumer confusion, with only marginal benefit for QCOM. Consumers are unlikely to spend hours learning the differences between various technologies.

I agree with those possibilities. Right now the problem is that when a customer has a bad experience with TDMA as an example, most customers don't know there is a viable alternative worth trying. The ad campaign would alert the customers to the fact that there ARE differences in quality and that CDMA often results in better quality than TDMA.

Hardly any customers can explain the technological difference between an AM radio signal and an FM signal, but they all know why they prefer the latter if given the choice -- because it sounds better. I think that point can be made in advertising without confusing the consumer because there truly is a differentiation in product. (If there weren't, I wouldn't be an investor.)

Of course I'm sure the very clever management of QCOM has already considered this issue.

At the annual shareholders' meeting, the point was made by an audience member that more marketing should be done to establish the brand name and, if I remember correctly, Intel was used as an example. One of the panel members taking questions (can't remember who) responded that they hear that comment quite often from other people on the management team and that it isn't falling on deaf ears.

I'm less sure than you that I'm right

Which means there is a greater probability that you're right and I'm wrong. :)

--Mike Buckley
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