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

To: slacker711 who wrote (2169)	10/11/1999 10:32:00 AM
From: slacker711	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 13582

More on Qualcomm and W-CDMA.... New chip plans call truce in 3G wars by: Khavalier (40 Something/M/King of Prussia) 42414 of 42414 Qualcomm to Develop Chips for All W-CDMA Standards New chip plans call truce in 3G wars Loring Wirbel, EETimes Qualcomm Inc. called a truce in the 3G wars over wideband CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access), announcing at Telecom '99 that it was developing chip sets for both multi-carrier and direct-spread versions of next-generation CDMA networks. Qualcomm (San Diego, Cal. stand 1130.002, USA Pavillion), working with the CDMA Developers Group, had promoted two different versions of multicarrier systems, dubbed 1X and 3X, as the proposed technologies for cdma2000, a 3G candidate that promised backward compatibility with North American IS-95 CDMA networks. L.M. Ericsson (Stockholm, Sweden, stand 4221) and NTT Mobile Networks Inc. [DoCoMo] (Tokyo, stand 5021-001) had proposed an alternative wideband CDMA based on direct spread spectrum technologies, which found favor in the European Union and the International Telecommunication Union. When Qualcomm sold its infrastructure business and cross-licensed technology to Ericsson earlier this year, the company abandoned its hard line with the ITU, hinting that it would develop technology for Ericsson/NTT standards. Monday's announcement of future development of the MSM5200 chip set reinforces the message that Qualcomm will be a merchant chip player in the Direct Spread market. Qualcomm chief executive Irwin Jacobs stressed that the company will continue to support cdma2000 through its MSM5100 set, which supports 1X and 3X multi-carrier CDMA. Given Qualcomm's extensive work with Lucent Technologies Inc. on base station chips for 1X CDMA, sources said it was likely Qualcomm would market devices for DS base stations. If current nomenclature is followed, that chip set would be called the CSM5200.Jacobs said that only time will tell whether DS or multicarrier would prove more important in 3G phones, but he said both CDMA versions will show a significant advantage over GSM data methods such as General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) and Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE). Jacobs said that current GPRS implementations in handsets are bad enough by wasting power to handle bursty data. But Jacobs said the transition to EDGE "goes exactly the wrong way for efficient data use -- CDMA tries to offer more bandwidth per symbol, while EDGE tries to stuff more amplitude and phase information per symbol, which will not allow the development of efficient 3G phones." In any event, Jacobs said Qualcomm chip developers will have the time to optimize designs for both CDMA variants, since the company does not anticipate widespread use of 3G technologies before 2003.

To: slacker711 who wrote (2169)	10/19/1999 3:33:00 PM
From: moat	Respond to of 13582

Now that Qualcomm has officially extended the roadmap to include W-CDMA, what does it really mean? So that everyone is in sync, I thought the entire thread (especially the new comers) would benefit from some prospective from Gregg Powers as we discuss the matter ... First, it is my understanding that W-CDMA is aka Direct Spread (DS), Qualcomm's MSM5200 will support the DS mode of CDMA, and W-CDMA takes up 5mhz of spectrum. Q's normal CDMA modes (know as multi-carrier or cdma2000) all operate within 1.25mhz. Here is Qualcomm's press release regarding DS and MSM5200: corporate-ir.net Here are Gregg's thoughts on W-CDMA and fortress Europe: Message 4782459 Message 4789746 It is also useful to keep in mind what Luis Pineda, director of product marketing for the CDMA Technologies Division at Qualcomm, said in this article: To date, however, 3G is split into three competing and incompatible camps: W-CDMA, cdma2000, and UWC-136. Qualcomm is leading the charge for cdma2000, while Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia, NTT, and several other companies are pushing W-CDMA. The UWC-136 standard is an upgraded version of TDMA. Consequently, 3G networks will remain fragmented for some time, predicted Luis Pineda, director of product marketing for the CDMA Technologies Division at Qualcomm, San Diego. So chip makers must hedge their bets and support numerous standards, Pineda said. "We're broadening our product offerings based on the future developments of CDMA technology," he added. Above excerp came from: Message 11572529 In summary, it seems to me Qualcomm worked very hard (for years) to not have W-CDMA, but finally gave in because the train (3G) is moving down the track no matter what. From the prospective of the consumer the world would probably be better off without W-CDMA, but that is not to be because it would give existing IS-95 operators too much of an advantage over existing GSM operators. As Qualcomm shareholders, we probably would be better off without W-CDMA, but it's not going to be too bad with it either. Charlie Munger have said that a sign of the good business was that management would often have to choose between good or better. We'll have to settle for good this time (for now). We'll see what the operators do (choose) as they move forward. Lucky for us (for not being operators), as shareholders of Qualcomm all we have to do is count royalties (and track ASP and subscriber growth worldwide).