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Technology Stocks : Nokia (NOK) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KyrosL who wrote (4189)	4/15/2000 7:44:00 PM
From: Ruffian	Respond to of 34857

Dosn't sound like you have researched or comprehend Q's business model. Q is an R&D driven company that is positioning its self for diversification into many avenues. Cdma is @ the core, but that will fund all future endeavors. Think of Q ala Bell Labs, without any corporate interference. Kinda like NOK starting off, "Rubbers"! <gg>

To: KyrosL who wrote (4189)	4/15/2000 8:42:00 PM
From: Wyätt Gwyön	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 34857

QCOM's "wheels and axle" IPR for CDMA will expire before the decade is over -- my estimate, since I never got an answer from the QCOM threads Keep in mind that the QCOM threads simply comprise individuals trying to figure stuff out, like the rest of SI. They do not have access to confidential licensing agreements, so when you ask such questions, you can't really expect a definitive answer. My understanding of QCOM's royalty licenses (I would say, the "received wisdom" on the QCOM threads) is that they are not patent-specific. Thus if you license from QCOM, you get the entire patent portfolio. When a given patent expires, that does not free you from royalty-payment obligations as per your licensing agreement. There are a lot of holes in this information, so it is a vague sketch at best. It gets down to the fact that many details of the agreements are not made public. And who knows how things will be interpreted for 3G. The devil is in the details, and basically, the people who could give definitive answers regarding the details are probably legally forbidden from doing so in a public forum like this (in addition to the possibility of further court battles). Meanwhile, things continue to happen in the real world. (Perhaps that is the best place to focus because all the armchair-philosophizing about the details of contracts we'll never see tends to be like estimating the number of angels that can dance on a pinhead.) These are bits of empirical evidence we can actually look at. W-CDMA seems to have strong support and growing momentum. If DDI and other IS-95 carriers indeed adopt it, then that sort of puts the kibosh on the cdma2000-is-a-slam-dunk-and-great-competitive-advantage-for-IS95ers theory. To me, that is strike one against the Qualcomm CDMA hegemony. Secondly, if QCOM is indeed trying to do an end run around DDI to force a cdma2000 network on the Japanese market, then that is another piece of evidence that does not fit into the framework most QCOM investors have been working with. Or, does not fit without a lot of conceptual jerry-rigging, IMHO.