Quite right TJ in that time-frame. But I'm a patient bloke. QCOM is just getting revved up, while NEM is revved up. Gold culture is bustling now but will fizzle again, as always, as times calm down and markets stabilize and wars abate and people go back to singing, dancing and having fun.
I enjoyed receiving a cyberphone advertisement on arriving home, via letter box. It was by Vodafone, which used to sell zero of my products. Now, 11 of them are 3G and 7 were not 3G.
All 11 pay me royalties and some might be using my ASICs. The 7 don't pay a royalty, but apparently according to the lawsuit against Nokia, which seems likely to be successful if one reads what Nokia has said, they all owe a royalty since QCOM patents were used to enable GSM/GPRS/EDGE upgrades.
Given the trend, I would be surprised if this time next year there are any devices available in NZ [other than what ZenBu and maybe a few oddball merchants are offering] that won't be 3G. Both Telecom and Vodafone, the two service providers of wide area cellphone networks, are racing into 3G. ALL of Telecom's cellphones pay royalties and I think about 80% use QCOM ASICs too.
That trend will be worldwide and accelerating.
Shortly, Telecom New Zealand will be selling Globalstar too, which is an all-QCOM product [ASIC and manufacture with the latest design about ready now, which will at least drag them into the 21st century, sort of]. One day you will own a Globalstar phone. But I'll take a rain-check on that one for about 10 years since it's back to the launch pad and system design for them, assuming they can raise capital.
When you start drooling over CDMA cyberphones, I'll know we are starting to get near public consciousness of what's going on. Until then, it is early days for QCOM. I'll wait. I've waited 15 years [and 17 since I first wondered how I could phragment photons and combine signals - being a failure at the mathematics basics, let alone the electronics to do the delivery, I decided it would be a lot easier to hire people who actually know these things]. Another 5 years won't hurt.
Meanwhile, NEM fan club members can shout and stomp and wave their little totems in the air at each other, waiting for the end of the world, or at least the end of the world as we know it and financial reset with USD and other fiat currency cascading implosion preceded by a housing price collapse, unemployment acceleration, SUV lines closed, etc etc ... there's a script somewhere, getting old now.
If it's true that the GSM Guild have used QCOM patents without permission to develop GSM into GPRS and EDGE, then it's one of the world's biggest swindles. I can't think of anything bigger. It's huge. QCOM would have exceeded GSM sales years ago but for GSM being upgraded.
I do not understand how that came to happen. With various litigation under way, perhaps we'll learn. Nokia says "Aw shucks, sorry, we thought we were covered under our general patent agreement" which is patently false. The dumb chump defence seems unlikely to make much headway given the clarity of the patent agreements.
Maybe QCOM simply was flat out doing other things and didn't realize what was going on. One can't know everything, even about the things one is busy trying to do oneself, let alone what everyone else is doing and how they are doing it and just what patents they have used [of many thousands 'out there']. One would assume they wouldn't do anything stupidly dishonest. Bad assumption by the look of it.
Mqurice |
