Mqurice, comment on QCOM story re: China:
Qualcomm Shares Fall After China Report
1 hour, 51 minutes ago
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Shares of wireless technology giant Qualcomm Inc.
(NasdaqNM:QCOM - news) fell 6 percent on Tuesday after a report said China
will announce its own form of advanced wireless technology and will try to pay
little or no royalties to Qualcomm, analysts said.
Qualcomm shares were down $2.28, or 6.4 percent.
at $33.13 in afternoon trade on Nasdaq, after earlier
trading as low as $32.04.
According to analysts citing an unidentified report,
China plans to announce its own form of advanced
wireless technology called TD-SCDMA (Time Division
Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access) on
Wednesday.
TD-SCDMA is a next-generation wireless network
technology capable of high-speed Internet
connections.
It is an alternative to the two main technology standards -- CDMA2000, which
Qualcomm is pushing, and WCDMA (news - web sites) (Wideband Code
Division Multiple Access), which has been adopted in Europe.
Although TD-SCDMA is based on Qualcomm's proprietary Code Division
Multiple Access technology, the company has not established agreements with
Chinese operators and China may try to contend that its patents are not
enforceable, analysts said.
"It is entirely foreseeable that there will be another round of court battles and/or
negotiations to determine licensing and royalty terms," Brian Modoff, analyst
with Deutsche Bank Securities said in a research note.
Modoff added that the news was not a surprise because China considers
TD-SCDMA to be a homegrown technology and it has publicly stated its
preference for it in the past.
He also said he did not expect the technology to be deployed until 2005 at the
earliest.
The technology is backed by Siemens AG (news - web sites) (SIEGn.DE),
Motorola Inc. (NYSE:MOT - news) and Nortel (Toronto:NT.TO - news) as well as
the China Academy of Telecommunications Technology. |
