Although many people have already documented results from the CC, I figured I document some of the things that they went through that were not covered here. Note that I am sure that there are some things I misheard (e.g. some of the investment names):
1) KDDI expects to launch DO next spring, full service by the end of the year.
2) KDDI has >1M EasyNav subscribers
3) Sprint has already >1.3M 1X devices to subscribers
4) Dr. J. addressed the fact that with the new SMZ vocoder and antenna diversity (combined) the voice capacity for CDMA systems will double. Note that Dr. J. also addressed the bizarre claim (by AWE among others) that with their new AMR vocoder they can double voice capacity. He said what I had suspected, that the AMR vocoder does not come with a change in GSM specification to decrease the number of timeslots needed. Therefore the increased capacity with AMR is, at best, minimal. (In contrast CDMA does not have assigned timeslots so it can take advantage of new vocoder technology as it comes along.)
5) Thornley pointed out that Qualcomm was correct last quarter when they predicted that the Korean ban on handset subsidies would have minimal impact on handset sales.
6) Conversions to 1x - Altel soon, US Cellular to convert from TDMA to 1x by later this year.
7) Unicom - Reports subscribers for only a portion of their network. If you assume the same penetration rate for the portion of their network that they don't report the subscribers are about 1.4M (about 40% higher than the reported number). Also, currently Unicom has 1x in trials in 7 cities but upgrade coming up soon.
8) Claim by Qualcomm is that voice will remain the dominant revenue producer for the next few years even at the most aggressive pushers of new technology such as KTFreetel. For instance KTFreetel expects that 25% of revenue in 2005 will be data, the rest voice. But this shouldn't minimize the impact of data as a differentiator. If people can buy a phone with data capability or one without, for about the same price, which will they choose?
9) 300 BREW Applications on sale now today running on 19 types of handsets from 7 manufacturers. And 50 BREW handsets are in development now. Over 1M handset with BREW capability have had their BREW capability used.
10) 1X chip shipments were 11M this quarter, and will be 15M next Q.
11) The number of things that the 6100 (sampling in Q4) can do is absolutely amazing - MPEG encoder/decoder, SMV Vocoder, Java accelerator, 2D/3D accelerator, ... - I couldn't write fast enough to keep track of everything so I am sure I left some important items out.
12) Goodwill amortization from Snaptrack will end in Dec Q.
13) The $139M pumped into QSI this quarter went to 3 places: Vesper (an ongoing $25-35M per Q), Pegasso (for interim financing) and an additional Inquam(sp?) investment. (Note: the fact that almost all of these investments are underwater does not bother me as much as it seems to bother most people - what telecom service provider is not underwater now? These are exactly what Qualcomm claims - Strategic Investments!!! Even if they never come above water (and I suspect that in a few years they will), that is not their only purpose. They are furthering the rollout of CDMA systems, and now is probably about the best time to do that, when Qualcomm has cash and is cash flow positive (and every other telecom manufacturer is just struggling to survive).)
14) Although Relliance(sp?) did not meet certain conditions which would require Qualcomm to invest another $200M, it is probable that Qualcomm will invest anyway (Note: although I suspect that they will change the conditions to get more for their $200M.)
Clark |
