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Qualcomm Shares Rise as China Seen Using Cellular Technology
Qualcomm Shares Rise as China Seen Using Cellular Technology
San Diego, March 31 (Bloomberg) -- Qualcomm Inc. shares rose as much as 6.4 percent amid
expectations China's Ministry of Information Industry will buy about $500 million in cellular- phone
equipment that uses Qualcomm technology.
Qualcomm rose 4 to 121 in midmorning trading, after earlier reaching a record 124 1/2. Motorola
Inc. and Lucent Technologies Inc., which make the equipment, said Chinese officials will sign
contracts for the orders tomorrow.
China Unicom, the country's second-largest phone company, said it plans to spend about $2.86
billion this year to build cellular networks in 190 cities, most of which will use Qualcomm's
technology. Optimism about China and an agreement from Sweden's Ericsson AB, the world's No.
3 cellular-phone maker, to support Qualcomm's technology have pushed Qualcomm shares up
almost 50 percent in the past week.
Qualcomm makes cellular phones and computer chips and also receives royalties from other
manufacturers that use the technology, called code-division multiple access, or CDMA. CDMA,
one of several standards for digital cellular networks, provides more capacity than competing
technology and is considered more efficient for data services.
The number of cellular-phone users in China is expected to surge 80 percent this year to 45
million. Currently, there are about 23 million CDMA users worldwide.
Qualcomm is the second-best performer so far this year behind CMGI Inc. in the Nasdaq 100
Index. |
