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Technology Stocks : The New Qualcomm - a S&P500 company -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Clarksterh who wrote (645)	8/7/1999 10:41:00 AM
From: engineer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13582

The answer tot he first one is switch brand name...Period. Their basestations are used prety much intact thru Nortel and they have been shown to be one of hte most reliable and best performing out there. But nobody wants to buy into a switch they don;t know. Erivy has a switch division which spent years getting itself installed, tested, and known. It take something like 7-10 years to establish this and you have to be prepared to throw away about $1B getting there. We had only gotten to something like $700M, but it was better at this time to give it up and let someone else take it than to press it. It is a BIG money game and considering that Qualcomm was pushing every other front on CDMA and getting pretty beat up, there was one that they had to give on.

To: Clarksterh who wrote (645)	8/7/1999 11:56:00 AM
From: Mike Buckley	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13582

Infrastructure suppliers must provide financing to their customers in the form of very long times between delivery of product and collection of payment. This is a huge drain on cash, and small companies just can't do it. I had hoped Qualcomm would grow fast enough that they could keep up, but it is a dangerous game and involves a lot of leverage. Just as well to be out of it. But Qualcomm isn't out of the financing business entirely. Part of the infrastructure deal with Ericsson involved participating in the financing. The increased earnings and the cash that came from the deal will put the Q in a better position to deal with their part of the financing, but they still have to deal with it if to a lesser extent. --Mike Buckley