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Technology Stocks : Qualcomm Moderated Thread - please read rules before posting -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (298)	7/7/2000 10:54:53 AM
From: John Biddle	Respond to of 197451

WCDMA can't be done without Q! technology and royalty payments. I fully agree with this statement, but you were also implying that therefore 3G can't be done without Q and I don't fully agree with that one. Let me start with saying that I am quite confident that QCOM has by far the better technology. Now on to the contentious stuff. EDGE is being called 3G, and the European GSM mfgs will push it and its precursor GPRS for all they are worth, to keep customers from finding out just how good CDMA really is. As has been discussed on this and the other boards many times, the oligopolistic patent pooling on GSM has given the pool members a very large pricing advantage over non-members. Q sees through this sham, (they're at least as smart as we are <g>), and rightly won't succumb to the offer to join the WCDMA pool. GPRS and EDGE don't need Q! so some semblance of WWeb can be offered but a meagre meal it will be. I agree with this as well, but to the extent that GSM vendors have hoodwinked the European government to back them, and while they are still riding high, they have the advantage while WCDMA royalties are murkey (in the eyes of Europeans, not us). With the auctions happening now, the crucial factor is spectrum, and anyone who doesn't get it (I agree quantity is artificially controlled) will be left out of the coming Boom to end all booms. I'm opposed to raising rates even though it makes it clear that action now is important, and might conceivably get some laggards moving. First it would be to go back on Q's agreement to fair and nondiscriminatory pricing. Second, we don't want to create an environment wherein others find it economically worthwhile to compete. Third, even with WCDMA or CDMA fully entrenched as the ONLY technology worth using, we don't want to price new entries into the market at a disadvantage to the others because they will be the more likely to bring n the big new ideas that push the envelope and entend the life of our golden goose.