I have seen 3 times in the past where people have taken large amounts of marketing FUD to try to unseat Q's investors. First was in 1991, when the TDMA camp was trying to get a vote for their standard and Irwin stands up and says "We should be that standard as we have the only field tested and commercially ready technology out there". We had just finished building commercial ASICS and were building the first prototype handsets. The TDMA camp had an emergency session which lasted 3 days and they mapped out one of the most frustrating campaigns in history against CDMA in terms of trying to gain support in the press. We all remember the Bill Frezza days. Perhaps a few of us remember the stock went from 16 (in those days, or in todays $'s from $1 down to $0.75...) down to 12.
Second was the one waged in late 1998 by ERICY in the face of the openning of the China deals. It finally ended when the MII issued a statement that they would not be going GSM any more and that they would be going only CDMA. That ended ERICY's FUD and they signed with Q within 2 months. But remember the articles by highly informed individuals who were sure that "CDMA would not work, and violated the laws of Physics". Irwin is still CEO, but where is the guy who published that stuff? Again, stock went from $50 down to $37.50 ( or today $6.25 down to $4.50).
Now we have the latest one going on in which everyone seems to be trying to outpublish the other in a race to pusblish the most abhorent FUD, with the noted exception, Qualcomm. They as always have taken the route of just going out, getting contracts and publishing the results. No hyperbole, no obtuse refernces to wordsmithing which gets it to look like some official said something they didn't, just performance.
I would look alot harder to the underlying motives here rather than the day to day FUD which is published. Also, I would ask that you translate the Chinese articles that were posted today into english and read them. MII seems to be restating what it said in Dec 1998. No future in GSM in terms of meeting their future needs, CDMA is the only way to go in one form or another, and that they will buy 30-45 Mil handsets in 2000/2001.
Place your bets on this horserace accordingly, but if the horse has already won all the races last year, why try to bet on the one which has repeatedly come in second? |
