Randall, you sure know how to arrive in Silicon Investor. I think that might be the single most interesting post I've yet read. That is hyperbole, but it's definitely a jaw dropper, given my penchant for predicting that QUALCOMM's market capitalisation would equal that of Intel, Compaq and Microsoft combined.
news.com
I'm a bit flummoxed while my little brain adjusts to a new reality = QUALCOMM and Microsoft.
I think that Tero's idea that QUALCOMM is alone in the world, friendless and despised is due for revision. The Q! has customers, it has the USA Government which just reinforced acceptance of Clinton and the Democratic Congressional crowd as fit enough to govern and now it has Microsoft as chum too. I heard that most Americans admire $ill Gates. [Hey, I bet qdog is feeling ill! Whoooppeeee eh Chris?]
I'd say L M Ericsson is looking a bit wan just now.
When I was a kid, I was in a bomb club. I put up the money and my older brother put up the brains. He had that right! Here I still am in the club; I put up the money, QUALCOMM put up the brains and now Microsoft is putting up some REAL money. They have got trucksfull of it. The real McCoy SuperDs at that! Not just some corporate paper.
I reckon it's pretty good. QUALCOMM formed a company with Sony who had lots of money and brains to make electronics factories work and were well versed in consumer electronics. Combining strengths. Now, Microsoft can put up money, which QUALCOMM doesn't have a big surplus of as well as lots of software and marketing oomph. This is powerful synchronicity.
Microsoft simply HAS to get in on the 21st century of this new telecosmic world. The old 1970s vision of a computer on every desk and in every home was okay for the times, but anachronistic now.
$ill Gates is very smart, though he dropped out of Harvard. I'm sure he could read a bit of George Gilder's stuff, check out Silicon Investor for the real oil, see which way the wind was blowing and see that L M Ericsson wasn't really necessary. I guess he didn't like reading that QUALCOMM was going to take over where he, Grove and those turbine makers at Compaq left off.
So he has offered a very big pile of cash in exchange for 51% [or will it be 49%] of the new company. Since brains beats money and The Q! has the brains in CDMA, I guess The Q! gets the main shareholding. That will also sit well with Janet Reno and the gang on the Hill.
Okay, so I get a bit diluted, but that's fine. To take advantage of the enabling technology of The Q! there are multibillions of dollars needed to develop it. No use Q! coming back to me for more = they got it all already; them and Globalstar. A bit like inventing the wheel - you simply can't develop all applications yourself. You need megatons of money and talent to do it justice. Not forgetting that patents don't last forever, although QUALCOMM has formed agreements that do!
I wonder how the exclusive CDMA by QUALCOMM deal with Globalstar will go.
Wow! I'll have to sleep on this one.
Meanwhile, the annual result is looking very, very solid. Not spectacular, but all round pretty good. Especially given the panic over the incipient end of the world and the fact that Korea disappeared nearly a year ago according to the doomsters. Well, compared with most companies, the results are spectacular, but I have special hopes for QUALCOMM.
I'd say Mr Market will decide that the joint venture with Microsoft is very much in QUALCOMM's favour - well, in both their favours, but synergistic. The Q! will do extremely well from it. Combined with a very solid result and great progress on all fronts, I'd say Mr Market is going to have to pay some serious money to get in on the ground floor of the new world defined by QUALCOMM.
Mqurice
$80 coming up! Don't be left behind. Microsoft isn't!
Dow 16,000 Feb 2002. |
