Dave:
You're in outer space with some of your comments. First of all, MOT is a leading CDMA infrastructure vendor. Moreover, within the last six months MOT bought an interest in a Korean handset manufacturer (Pantech), that uses QC ASICs, to accelerate its availability of CDMA handsets.
What makes you believe that Samsung is not making money on its CDMA products? Korean handset prices, i.e those sold within Korea, are higher than the world market as the country is relatively closed to foreign competition. Beyond this, helped by a depreciated Won, the Koreans are having good success outside their borders.
As for QC's stock versus Nokia's, I think you are missing something relatively obvious: the market capitalization and valuation multiples are dramatically different. NOK is 25x forward earnings and Qualcomm looks to be under 16x forward. Moreover, QC should be positioned to grow more rapidly over the next several years, while NOK/A (and ERICY) face a 3G transition issue (hence the current vitriolic warfare). While QC is exposed in Korea, the U.S. (which is a safe haven) is growing rapidly in importance (and remember that much of its Korean royalty revenue relates to Samsung & LG exports to the U.S.). To date, NOK and ERICY have been more successful in Asia...but that cuts both ways as these companies face uncertainties in many of their major markets.
Best regards,
Gregg |
