John, re "Deception and creating illusions is allowed--especially in politics between soverign nations"; very true! When Unicom came out and said that they are still going to use CDMA, but it may just be the next generation in a couple years, it brought back fond memories of past business dealings in Asia. Actually the memories are fond now, but it wasn't so great at the time.
My take on all this is that China has outfoxed Qualcom on this one, probably has not had the intention to use current generation CDMA for some time but needed to drag on the possibility to support their government in the trade talks. Also, they wanted to get more technical data on the technology to see if they could copy it. Even though I own this stock, I laughed when I saw the talk of China's homegrown CDMA (developed at a university far in the backwoods of China, yadi yadi yadi), as this is their forewarning that they are going to use your technology and call it theirs.
Fortunately, Qualcom has has somes big advantages that some companies don't have in Asia. CDMA is big enough that the the government is willing to get involved, the technology is advanced enough that hopefully Qualcom hasn't given away enough information that China can manufacture future generations without help. This will be very interesting to see how it plays out. I hope Qualcom has some people with experience dealing with Asians and I hope the management listens to them, because the Asians are very smart people and view the world much differently then we do. What we call illegal or unethical when Americans do it, may very well seem like normal business dealings to them. And I expect right now they are surprised by all the hub-hub, just because they have outsmarted Qualcom so far in this deal. Just as qualcom's international experts are trying to explain to Qualcom management what the Chinese are thinking, Unicom's international experts are trying to explain to their management how Qualcom is viewing this.
Hopefully, in the end the George Gilder "technology wins" philosophy will bear out. Plus, I'm sure the Chinese want to gradually fit in with the business ethics of the rest of the world if they can just figure out what they are and how they work. As one Asian told me, "that line you see so clearly that I'm not suppposed to cross in business dealings, is very hard for me to see, but I'm trying".
Tom
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