If my memory was correct, I went to the Qualcomm booth at Telecom 1999 in Geneva and was lucky to meet Mr. Irwin Jacobs in person. He was only too pleased to demo to me personally their Globalstar solution and even had me call my family overseas for free. Of course, the solution worked perfectly, even then.
At the time, everything you read, it was a winner-takes-all with only Qualcomm at the table. It seemed they were the only company with the eco-system to exploit the promise of wireless convergence. He seemed such a nice old man, very gentle, very patient, and a real scientist in every sense of the word. So, I feel sorry somehow that somewhere along the way, Mr. Jacobs did not find a way to outsmart Mr. Jobs to usurp the 'missionary' role that the latter is for the geeks all over the world. Unfortunately, the younger Jacobs seems to look too much an MBA type and not enough the rocket scientist.
Still, I am grateful for MQ's posts, and it seems that all is not lost and Qcom will get a good piece of the IP pie at the device level while the infrastructure and equipment beneficiaries will be Huawei, ZTE (?) at the cost of Cisco whose promise is rapidly fading.
BTW, do you have any views on whether IDCC has a chance to have a real crack at a big piece of the IP pie? I promise this will be the last post on Qcom as I dread TJ wielding his 'ban' axe on me before too long. |
