Hi, CenturyMan. Your post caused me to think long and hard about the hurdles you described for Qualcomm. Thank you for motivating (scaring) me, because I really needed to address those issues.
>> Speaking of stronger value chains I think Q's value chain is in total revolt.
This is not unusual. Just look at the lack of affection between Microsoft or Cisco and the members of their value chains. Moore commented on this phenomenon on pg.46 of tfm:
Gorillas carve out the sweet spot from the value chains they dominate and leave the scraps to the partners. When the customer demands some high-cost, low-value enhancement, the gorilla makes sure that the burden falls on someone else, not them... It is this form of power that causes every other company in the value chain to genuinely hate the gorilla. They don't hate the people, they hate the company, because it is feeding off their work to make its profits gigher. And there is nothing, apparently, that anybody can do about it.
As far as the Koreans are concerned, they are tough negotiators, but they are thorough in finding their most advantageous position. Their wcdma stance might just be a tough negotiating tactic. Or perhaps they are hedging their bets against the possibility of a huge wcdma export market. But until NOK proves wcdma viable, both technologically and financially, to the carriers, I doubt that Korea will bolt from the Q camp as it would not be in their best self interests.
uf |
