jfred,
By the end of the year Qcom\Sony will be producing 300,000 teleputers per month, 3,600,000 per year. At $200 profit a piece, that's $360 mil a year, slightly more than half of which goes into our coffers.
This is being done out of a 400,000 sq. ft. plant in San Diego. Once its up and running and all the bugs have been worked out, it takes very little to duplicate the plant and be up and running for 600,000 units.
How many plants will Qcom|Sony build? Well, that depends on the world-wide demand for teleputers. I can't even guess at what that number might be. But I can say that I cannot think of another tech product that will come even close. Just think of the number of telephones in the world, all to be pretty well usurped by the teleputer. And think of all the people who don't have, but desperately need, communications; China, India, Africa, South America, etc.etc.
Certainly, the number of teleputers will quickly outstrip the number of computers in use.
I think the teleputer manufacturing business is a lovely business to be in. It will provide a healthy revenue stream for us well into the future. Sure Qcom would have liked to manufacture it all, the base stations etc. but since the entire globe has to be supplied it will take all the major players to do the job, Motorola, Lucent, Nortel and the other big boys will all have to pitch in to get the job done. Its a very ambitious enterprise for the planet.
Still, I think you are right, Qcom will make more off the royalties than the teleputers. --- Isn't that a delightful proposition?
One other thing, I think somehow Qcom has a lock on the production of CDMA teleputers through some necessary chip that it has only licensed to one company to produce. I am under the impression that Qcom has set it up so that it will produce all the teleputers it wants to produce, without competition, and it will only let others produce them if Qcom itself can't keep up with demand.
I invite comment on this last point from all.
Philip Reinstein |
