I have been lurking on this thread for about six months, although this is my first posting. I am long on Qualcomm and think the technology is very exciting. I have some observations to bring to this thread and would appreciate everyone's input.
I am in Atlanta and did some research this weekend at the cellular stores. The big player here is BellSouth, which is not CDMA. No surprise. Airtouch is the second player. AT&T, Nextel and various others are also here. The local newspapers have been full of year-end promotions but mostly for analog phones. There is very little promotion surrounding digital. I visited an Airtouch store this weekend and they only had the Sony CDMA phone (which in terms of size does not appear to be very competitive with the Startac, which is probably the standard to aspire to in terms of size and convenience. The lay person does not understand the difference between analog and digital). The salesman had not heard of the Q phone. In fact he was in total disbelief that Qualcomm would offer a non-dual mode phone. He naturally had no knowledge of the upcoming dual mode Q phone. Airtouch is offering a digital plan for $50 (for 500 minutes). This seems very competitive at .10 per minute. However I doubt that many people in Atlanta have taken this plan, probably because they don't know about it and would not want a brick for a phone.
I visited a Radio Shack to see the Sprint store within. There was no CDMA to be seen. They were pushing BellSouth analog. The Sprint area seemed to have phone accessories. No CDMA brochures. I'm concerned that Radio Shack is a lousy marketing partner for Sprint. Radio Shack does a lousy job with their computer store ComputerCity vs CompUSA and totally blew it with Incredible Universe. All they have are these dated core stores today. Why would'nt Sprint find a deal with Circuit City or Best Buy ? Does anybody have experience in other parts of the country with this relationship ?
From everything I've read on this thread, Qualcomm appears to have sold out its Q production, so I'm not to worried in the short-term, but I'm trying to reconcile the national scene with what I see in metro Atlanta, which is a very affluent and mobile city. (Forget national stats on the city itself.) Possibly BellSouth not selecting
CDMA is the reason for the situation. Airtouch and Sprint do not
appear to be filling the opening yet. Airtouch seems to be very focused on analog and companion plans for $4.95.
About a month ago I visited Japan and spent half a day in the akihabara district touring electronic stores. I was amazed at the thousands of digital phones, sold alongside inexpensive calculators and discmans on the street. There were wooden home made racks of inexpensive phones outside every store. NTTDoCoMo is definitely the big player. Also interesting is that the phones look very inexpensive, are significantly smaller (rough guess 1.5 inches x 6 inches) and lighter than the typical Nokia and Motorola type phone you see here. They are available in black, silver, teenager colors. Companies like Panasonic, Sharp etc make these phones. I do not see
any of the usual U.S., European or Korean brands in Japan. If CDMA does take hold in Japan (which I think is essential), Qualcomm's business plan is hopefully predicated on royalties and ASICS rather than sales of its own phones, which may be wonderful but I suspect too expensive for the mass market in Japan and everywhere. Does anyone have other experiences with regard to Japan ?
Finally I also lurk on the Intel thread and am impressed that John Hull, IR at Intel, responds to certain postings. Has anyone contacted Qualcomm to see if they will participate in his forum. They do not need to respond to every question but I think it would be helpful for business issues such as raised in this posting to get their views. Naturally we will not expect them to address specific earnings forecasts.
I've enjoyed reading the informative posts on this thread. Happy
Holidays to all and hopefully we will see some recovery in Qualcomm next year. |
