Mike, Ericcson stopped paying Bill Frezza a 3 day a month retainer to lambast cdma in general and Qualcomm in particular about a year ago. Now cdma licences are dropping like confetti - Casio sells a lot of stuff and cdmaOne would go well in much of it. The biggie, Ericsson, is yet to join the parade, but time marches on and cdma isn't getting any younger. Every handset sold by everyone else is a handset not sold by Ericsson. Who I'm sure could fit a Qualcomm ASIC into some of their excellent little handsets to the benefit of all.
A suitable length of time has gone by for negotiating nuances. They have made enough noise about their own W-CDMA-VW and held enough conventions to use as a fig leaf while they approach Qualcomm for a licence. But they are no doubt as stolid as the stereotype, so might yet go down with the GSM ship. [Confetti, ships, fig leaves, parades? Huh? Talk about mixed metaphors].
Meanwhile, Ramsey has stepped into the political breech and is ranting like a true pundit. Not that I'm piqued because that's my job - I guess I abdicated. Rotten pay! At the beginning of the 21st century, I'd hesitate to hand out atrocity awards. The queue would be lengthy and some personal embarrassment could result to members of this discussion. Anyway, you'd have to hand them out to descendants, which loses the point. Who really accepts responsibility for their father's or country's defects - check your own here!
So sticking with the economics/current politics, the Japanese leader v. people idea is somewhat wonky. The idea that the free societies are run for the benefit of the population would not gain a constitution-changing majority in the USA. The most accurate description would be that they are run for the benefit of the politicians who need to avoid too great a dissonance with the thoughts of the mob.
In the collectivist societies, there is a reasonable belief that by being part of a collective, one benefits more than managing one's own property and decision making. A colleague reckoned that life in the army was great. A bit strait-laced and no doubt restrictive, but nevertheless very straightforward. No thinking needed, [or allowed], meals served regularly, accommodation looked after. All you have to do is wake when the trumpet goes and do as you're told.
About half of New Zealanders like that idea. And I dare say a lot of Americans reckon there could be a damn sight more left, right, left, right to the benefit of all. Oh, oh, getting carried away now.
So let's forget the atrocity awards and stick with cdmaAwards. Hand out handsets to the Japanese, Chinese etc. While not all Japanese soldiers in China were happily married men doing a sterling job for their country [Ramsey gave me some urls of photos which would nauseate most people and give them a down to earth image of some Japanese practices in China] it is fair to say that many of the great and glorious freedom fighters from Britain, USA and New Zealand were not gentle giants either. [My father excepted of course]
How will the Asian economic activities affect Qualcomm? Qualcomm is going to do extremely well. China, Japan, Korea are all doing very well. Japan has some adjustment to do - clear some debt, print some more money, open up to trade. But that is easy enough. They've been international for decades with production facilities around the world. Economic colonialists who have bought and organized themselves into a pre-eminent position. But you need to look inside Japan Inc as it fragments into the real constituents of Sony, Fujitsu, Toyota etc. Those constituents will continue to do well. Japanese will eventually stop mucking about growing rice in tiny patches around their houses and buy it from Thailand/Australia/USA. One day the USA might even stop subsidizing [protecting] their farmers growing grain to make ethanol to burn in cars - there is perfectly good very cheap crude oil for that purpose.
Japanese look happy, prosperous and cellphone buying to me. Engineer says the same of Korea. So do the more recent sales statistics after a bit of a fright for some people six months ago. Maybe they have had a bit of an economic prang - so cellular sales drop to a growth rate of 30% per year. No big deal. Japan/Korea are only 200 million people out of 6 billion. China remains fairly unaffected though [not counting Hong Kong and Taiwan].
So overall, there hasn't been a measurable dent in the 5 year outcome for cdma worldwide due to the Korean/Japanese problems.
Well, that's how it looks at 8.21 am on Friday 17 April 1998 to me anyway.
Mqurice
Dow 16000 2002
[Some of you will be thinking by now "hey it is heading that way". Qualcomm touching $56 today - anyone still waiting for $40? Hahahaa!! I hope you got fully on board Ramsey - Qcom won't drop on the quarterly results like the good old days - it is a new paradigm - it goes UP on results now - because people learned to their dismay to sell BEFORE results - now they are doing that too much - so it does the opposite to their expectation when results come out - they hope to buy after the results, but damn it all, it has already gone up. It's like catching a greased pig].
Executive summary:
Japan/Korea okay, no sweat.
cdma rulz ok
Qualcomm shareholders get rich. |
