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Technology Stocks : Qualcomm Incorporated (QCOM) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kayaker who wrote (43240)	10/4/1999 5:43:00 PM
From: w molloy	Respond to of 152472

If CDMA is such crap, why do you have QCOM listed as one of your favorite stocks (of 2) in your profile? Hardly a compelling argument, is it? Anyway - he said that IS-95 data service is inferior to CDPD. Not quite the same thing. w.

To: Kayaker who wrote (43240)	10/4/1999 5:44:00 PM
From: Joe NYC	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 152472

Bob, If CDMA is such crap, why do you have QCOM listed as one (of 2) of your favorite stocks in your profile? Haven't updated that for ages. I don't have a position in the stock right now. I did have position on and off over time. But I am a user as much as an invertor. And as a user, I see Qualcomm not keeping up. I went with CDMA technology because of the promise of easy addition of data to reasonably priced voice. This promise, (and some investigation on my part) is what made me decide to go with CDMA as a user and to invest in QCOM. QCOM is yet to deliver on some of these promises. The competition now has similarly priced voice, and have moved ahead QCOM in data. Maybe it will all change when (or if) 3G systems come on-line and QCOM will re-gain the lead. Or maybe the lack of data access has to do with carriers, not QCOM, but the bottom line is that AT&T and Bell South have it now, Nextel will have it shortly, but there is no sign that any CDMA operators will have it anytime soon. (Unless you count press releases from 1997 and 1998 about supposed availability in 1999). But if you evaluate the market realistically, you only need 3G class rates (Megabit per second or more) only if you want to use a wireless modem for a laptop (to look at pictures of Pamela Anderson). The real market for wireless data will be handheld phones (soon to be counted billions) with a small display of about 200 characters or less. How much difference does it make that it would take .2 seconds to get the screenfull of data, rather than 0.002 seconds? Especially, if the server on the other side of the connection takes say another .2 seconds to prepare the data for you? That's why I think it is more important to have a low bit rate access NOW, when the market is still forming, rather than shooting for some imaginary market with HDR years from now. If I had to make a decision about which carrier (and technology) to go with now, I would have hard time justifying CDMA. Joe