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To: mauser96 who wrote (2657)	6/16/1999 8:58:00 AM
From: slacker711	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 54805

I did find a recent press release at qualcomm.com saying that QCOM was developing chipsets and modems for base stations. Maybe this means QCOM sold their old infrastructure business but is free to develop new products. I'm not 100% sure exactly what the word "infrastructure" means in this specific case, but I thought it included things like base stations. The Q sold off the manufacturing and design portions of their infrastructure group. However they will still be designing the ASIC's that go into CDMA base stations. I believe they have somewhere around 70% of this market. They also will still be building gateways for Globalstar and act as a subcontractor for Nortel's infrastructure division. They also will still be selling HDR, which is an improvement to existing infrastructure. To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure what Qualcomm gave up, except for the contracts with LEAP, and various other start-ups (Russia, Brazil, Mexico). Most of these were a headache anyway. Slacker

To: mauser96 who wrote (2657)	6/16/1999 9:02:00 AM
From: Mike Buckley	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 54805

Lucius, Maybe this means QCOM sold their old infrastructure business but is free to develop new products. Exactly. I'm not 100% sure exactly what the word "infrastructure" means in this specific case, but I thought it included things like base stations. Right again. I don't pretend to understand the nuances and all the implications, but I'll explain how I think of it. Let's assume you develop software that goes in a light bulb that requires special equipment in the lamp to work. But nobody is interested because everyone, especially your competitors, say it doesn't and won't work. So you get into the lamp-manufacturing business and the light bulb-manufacturing business to prove that it does work. After a few years of selling the lamps and the light bulbs, the world begins to catch on and realize that your handy dandy software really does work. However, recognizing the limitations of your resources you now realize that a much larger company can do a better job of manufacturing and marketing the lamps. So you cut a deal with a major competitor who had been holding out on promoting your product. You sell the lamp business to that competitor, eliminating a competitor and picking up a new partner at the same time. By selling the lamp business, you've got a huge company making more and more lamps. With every lamp they use a technology that they license from you. With every lamp they sell, the consumer also buys a few light bulbs. You are still making the light bulbs and you're also licensing the light bulb technology to other light bulb manufacturers, so you're making money on all the light bulbs and all the lamps. Ahem, you're making money because you've got proprietary control over the really important stuff that makes the lamps and the light bulbs work. The light bulbs don't work without the lamps and the lamps don't work without the light bulbs. And you control the innerds to both. In the mean time, you've got other competitors creating similar technologies that work. Those technologies are a little bit inferior in that they cause the light bulbs to flicker from time to time and because they burn out too soon. Because those competitors are vying for a technological acceptance, you can't sit on your laurels. Your only chance to stay ahead of the game is to continue to develop new improvements and uses for your light bulbs and your lamps even though you are no longer making the lamps. Heck, some day you may decide not to make the light bulbs too. But you'll never, ever give up control of the innerds. Fair analogy? --Mike Buckley

To: mauser96 who wrote (2657)	6/16/1999 5:52:00 PM
From: DaveMG	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 54805

Here's some url's that might help everyone understand the deal: Message 8938991 Message 8940871 Message 8941163 They retained the rights to HDR(HighDataRate: skali.com The sale had no effect on QCOM's ability to sale Base Station Controllers, the ASICs that do the "thinking" for the cell: biz.yahoo.com There's some disagreement as to what percentage of the base station Asic market QCOM holds. I've seen numbers as low as 70% but others claiming QCOM owns the entire market. The SalSmith Barney report states that they don't believe anyone will try to compete with QCOM on these BSCs because the market is too small, which means that everyone or almost everyone's phones must be able to communicate with baste stations running Q designed ASICs/software.. This is a long but wothwhile Adobe Acrobat report: smithbarneyresearch.com Don't forget there is a QCOM news thread at Subject 19304 Hope this helps...DMG