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Technology Stocks : METRICOM - Wireless Data Communications -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gus who wrote (2019)	1/24/2000 7:50:00 PM
From: Clarksterh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3376

Gus - You totally missed the point that MCOM is in control of its own destiny and can co-exist with whichever format wins: CDMA2000 or WCDMA. You're right, I intentionally ignored it. However, since you insist, what niche is it that you believe can be addressed by MCOM, but not by 3g services (either W-CDMA or CDMAOne) when the big names start rolling it out? Haven't you been keeping up on the way satellite voice/data is going to be integrated with terrestrial wireline and wireless networks? Start with MIT's Oxygen to get a broader viewpoint. You're right again. Never heard of it (unless it is the fibre backbone project by CTR Group). But you'll have to trust that I know what I am talking about when I say that satellites will never be competitive with terrestrial systems in areas with lots of users (of whatever service is being talked about) per square mile. Of course there are always exceptions, like perhaps for a user who happens to be in a canyon in the middle of an urban area. But it is noise to HDR revenues, or to Ricochet for that matter. Even if that were true, there still will be no ASIC business for QCOM. Incorrect. Qualcomm will be building W-CDMA ASICs regardless of the flavor. Of course they have to settle on a W-CDMA standard first, and then test it, but when they do I guarantee Qualcomm will be making ASICs. I do agree that their market share will almost certainly be smaller than for CDMA-2000, but neither is it likely to be inconsequential. QCOM continues to win the PR battle but it continues to lose the sales war. DAILY. Over 500,000 handsets are sold daily. Uh!? And GSM was losing the war to analog in the early 90's? That isn't the way to count the casualties. I concede that there will be a tendency, not driven by technological need but by supplier habit, to go from GSM to W-CDMA instead of CDMA-2000. But as W-CDMA continues to be delayed there is more and more chance that this tendency will be weakened, especially in countries where GSM service providers must compete with CDMAOne/CDMA-2000 (i.e. China, Japan, ...). Hasn't it ever occured to you that perhaps, just perhaps, fewer companies want to work with QCOM unless they come to terms with the ITU and the 3G Patent Platform since the realization is starting to hit more and more people that increasing the global telecommunications pie is a priority in order to mitigate the cost of technology and the effects of deregulation. Given that currently whichever flavor of CDMA is used, they will still owe Qualcomm the same royalties (a done deal with several big telecom companies), how does this matter? I posit that in fact the total W-CDMA royalties for small Korean, Taiwanese, ... companies will be larger than total CDMA-2000 royalties would be, even if Qualcomm halves their rate for W-CDMA. Each individual company with IPR may only get 0.25 to 1.0 percent, but there will be a lot of them all trying to cram into the pot at the same time. Given this, I conclude that there is a lot of the pot calling the kettle black and just plain jealousy by companies late to the CDMA party. Clark