| | | I wasn't sure how long my steam would last. But now I think of all the years whichever QCOM board was active we were scared of and complaining about what some other company was doing/going to do to us and our stock price. And how they were damaging us. Motorola, Ericsson, Nokia, IDC, Lucent, Nortel, the FTC, Apple, and now AMD and NVDA. And look at where they are now. Lucent (the once great Western Electric) a minor part of Alcatel. Nortel, defunct I think though someone bought them--Lucent maybe). Motorola is now smaller in Chicago and the device manufacturing part owned by Lenovo. Nokia tiny market cap and Ericy not much bigger. Blackberry small. Yeah, Apple is huge but most of our nemesis's we outlasted and overcame.
Remember when someone in the annual meeting complained to Irwin on stage that it was not fair. The IP developed by QCOM was being stolen by some, misused by others. How could we survive with that kind of unfair competition. Irwin just listened and then said words to the effect of: We know others will copy and infringe our patents, recruit our talent, but it always takes them time and by the time they are able to use our stuff, we'll be on to other developments. I think at least a bit of that culture still survives at QCOM if diluted.
QCOM decided many years ago they wanted to be engineers and scientists. They did not wish to be marketers or even specialize in business functions. We did not want to sell to end markets. Or even promote ourselves. That's changing now with CA encouraging the promotion of Snapdragon. But still, the emphasis is on selling to OEM's and others who wish to be self promoting and well known. But investors on the SI board will continue to insist that we be what I never intended to be like other companies and that we attain a PE which is higher than the one when they bought shares. Well, I bought mine cheap (at less the the 150 week moving average of the stock price is my latest technique) and make over 20% a year buying when cheap and giving it away or selling when it's far above that moving average. I'm content. |
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