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

To: John Stichnoth who wrote (1921)	9/24/1999 9:33:00 PM
From: Jenne	Respond to of 13582

Qualcomm CEO Sees 1 Mln Globalstar Phone Customers (Update1) Bloomberg News September 23, 1999, 1:25 p.m. PT Qualcomm CEO Sees 1 Mln Globalstar Phone Customers (Update1) (Updates with closing stock prices.) San Diego, Sept. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Qualcomm Inc. Chief Executive Irwin Jacobs said Globalstar Telecommunications Ltd., the satellite-telephone operator for which it's making equipment, can reach a million customers quickly. Globalstar counts the world's the largest wireless-services company, Vodafone AirTouch Plc, among its partners. The company will officially announce the availability of its service at Telecom '99 in Geneva next month. Investors will be concerned about Globalstar's prospects, Jacobs said, since Iridum LLC and ICO Global Communications Ltd., two other satellite-telephone services providers, have sought bankruptcy court protection from creditors. ''It will be largely a soft launch,'' he said of Globalstar's expected announcement. ''Gradually, each operator will decide when it's appropriate to go into the full commercial launch. I would expect much of that will happen about the beginning of the year.'' Jacobs said he expects demand for satellite phones to rise as the regional operators ''do their part'' to market and support the service. ''I won't predict anything, but I would hope we get fairly quickly past the million (subscriber) mark,'' he said. That milestone could be reached in ''a year, optimistically,'' he said, ''but probably more than a year.'' Shares of Qualcomm, based in San Diego, fell 3 1/2 to 186 5/8. The company is the best-performing stock in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index this year. Globalstar fell 1 5/8 to 24 1/4. Selling the Handset Business Jacobs, who is also the company's chairman, said in an interview at PCS '99 in New Orleans that Qualcomm is talking with ''several different parties'' about buying its wireless handset business by the end of the year. ''There are several worldwide companies that have expressed interest, so we're now exploring that,'' he said, without being more specific. ''We'd like to see (the sale) result in another strong manufacturer that perhaps has a more worldwide presence than we have,'' he said. The new owner could choose to keep using the Qualcomm name in the U.S. Selling the handset business also means Qualcomm will have to determine the future of its Qualcomm Personal Electronics joint venture with Sony Corp. The venture started as a cooperative manufacturing operation to help both companies make phones using the code-division multiple access -- or CDMA -- technology that Qualcomm invented. ''What we expected ... was that they would end up with 90 percent of the sales because of their very strong brand name, and we would end up with maybe 10 percent,'' Jacobs said. ''But over time it actually went the other way.'' Sony decided to exit the North American CDMA handset business in the third quarter, but remains part of the joint venture for now. Qualcomm is also looking at ways to expand its OmniTRACS business, which lets companies manage fleets of vehicles, he said. The business is profitable and generates cash, Jacobs said without providing details.