Dave - For questions #1 & 2, review some of the postings from Gregg Powers several weeks ago. Many of the posters on this thread are eloquent, and then some seem to know what they are talking about; Gregg seems to put the two together nicely. (On the other hand, I am biased as he says the things we all love to hear about our precious Q!!!)
To partially answer #3, however, I was at the Informed Investors Seminar on Biotechnology stocks in San Diego a couple weekends ago, where Michael Murphy was the keynote speaker. The seminar was at the Radison hotel in Mission Valley, just down the road from Qualcomm Stadium. Of course Mr. Murphy also pushed his new book "Every Investor's Guide to High-Tech Stocks & Mutual Funds" that you refer to. While in line to get my copy signed, I happened to open it up to the page in the communications section where he talks about Qualcomm and CDMA. (I have since spent some time calculating the odds of my opening it up to that particular page, but that is exactly what happened, believe it or not!) Apparently, Mr. Murphy is not a fan of Qualcomm! I sensed that he may even have some kind of agenda against it for who knows what reason. IMHO.
For those who have not read the book, Mr. Murphy says or implies that:
1.) there is no capacity difference between CDMA and TDMA, that TDMA is an open standard with hundreds of suppliers accepted by most of the world, and that CDMA is a closed standard accepted in only a couple of non-US countries, and accepted there only because of mysterious government intervention in the free market. (The implication, IMO, is bribery).
2.) CDMA system development is behind schedule due to performance and development problems.
3.) CDMA takes more base stations than TDMA, and is therefore a more costly system.
4.) CDMA voice quality is poor, and drops calls easily when a phone is in motion., as in a car.
All of the above seems to be rubbish. (I will let those more eloquent and knowledgeable say it better!). 1.) QCOM is in many more countries than implied in the book, and is being accepted because it is a better system with higher capacity. 3.)System development seems to have met all its deadlines since I have followed the stock, roughly two years. 4.) My QCP-820 is fantastic, does not drop calls, and has great voice quality. I do not know about 3.), perhaps someone else can shed some light on this base station thing.
When I finally got to the front of the line, I politely asked Mr. Murphy one Bio-Tech question, then pulled out my phone, looked him in the eye, and told him he was wrong about Qualcomm and CDMA. He acted a mite defensive, and said that he "was'nt saying that CDMA did'nt work well, just that Ericsson and TDMA had such a large head start that it would be almost impossible to catch up." It sounded like some fast backpedaling to me! Perhaps he'll know better next time he comes to Q country.
GO QUALCOMM!!!
Steve |
