Well,
I haven't been in here recently, mostly because my portfolio currently only has 1 stock that is recommended by JD (SFA). I do still get the newsletter (at least until my subscription is up in November), and read the hotline messages online.
The reason I'm posting is that I was fairly disappointed that JD bought the "rebuttal" from the AT&T Chief Technology Officer regarding the recent Gilder piece on AT&T's wireless strategy. Needless to say, my opinion is that the "rebuttal" is so filled with swiss cheese logic, it belongs on a serving tray at one of the dinner tables in Grindelwald. The fact that John bought into the rationale is also disconcerting, and very much counter to my understanding of the situation. I think AWE is in a heap of trouble, due to capacity issues, lack of interoperability with the mainstays of IMT-2000 (CDMA-MC and CDMA-DS), and the pinning of their hopes on the bleeding EDGE technology.
John, if you're reading this, QCOM is not worried that their royalty rates will decrease if CDMA is made a worldwide standard. That's their goal. EDGE is no more a threat to QCOMs plans than Yugo is to Toyota. The fact that at the end of that article AT&T implied that they will need to migrate to a CDMA infrastructure in the future is a huge concession that just gets off-handedly thrown out there and then quickly glossed over. AT&T and AWE may still be able to pull their bacon out of the fire, but they're going to have to swallow some seriously big CDMA/QCOM humility pills a la Ericsson last year, and what I expect will be Nokia this year in order to compete with Sprint and Verizon.
All of this is JMHO...
DWB |
