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

To: w molloy who wrote (352)	7/11/2000 1:09:14 AM
From: Ruffian	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 197472

If Qualcomm doesn't own CDMA, who DOES? by: Bill_Dalglish (58/M/Tennessee) 7/10/00 10:38 pm Msg: 52710 of 52730 If Qualcomm doesn't own CDMA, who DOES? Answer: Primarily Nokia (NOK), Ericsson (ERICY), Texas Instruments (TI) and InterDigital (IDCC) (with smaller pieces of the pie owned by Siemens, GoldenBridge and others). Judging by the almost more than 70% drop in Qualcomm's share price recently, investors are no longer believing the once popular: "Qualcomm OWNS CDMA!" Granted that Qualcomm DOES own 2G narrowband CDMA, which finds expression in Qualcomm's proprietary "CDMAone." But when it comes to 3G, the CDMA steam engine backs away from its narrow track and moves onto a wide track. That wide track has been developed primarily by Nokia, Ericsson, and InterDigital and will be mated with the worldclass DSP designed by Texas Instruments. Perhaps the media and investors are beginning to realize that CDMA originated not with Qualcomm or any other commercial enterprise, but with the U. S. military, which still employs it in secret communication because of its excellent encryption capabilities. Basic CDMA technology is therefore in the public domain. Qualcomm harnessed that existing CDMA technology for a narrow band product for 2G use, competing with 2G TDMA and GSM technology. They deserve a heck of a lot of credit for that genius. Unfortunately right now for Qualcomm, they did not realize that the demand in 3G would be for technology that: 1. has the capability for transmitting huge quantities of data (Internet, etc) AND 2. is related to the TDMA-GSM technology found in 85% of the world's digital phones. Not perceiving the importance of these factors, Qualcomm did not bother to participate in the various international 3G standards-setting committees, except the one committee that wrote the 3G standard for CDMA2000 (the so-called "Qualcomm" standard). For the past two years, Nokia, Ericsson, InterDigital and some others have put together new international 3G standards with precious little of Qualcomm's patented technology in them. They didn't need Qualcomm because Ericsson had been working on wideband CDMA, building on the military specs and Nokia had formed a $70 million alliance with InterDigital, giving Nokia access to the experienced engineers at InterDigital who had done more wideband CDMA work than anyone else in the world. (With Texas Instruments, InterDigital had even developed, produced and successfully demonstrated the world's first wideband CDMA "system on a chip." That chip, although designed primarily for fixed wireless use, turned out to be readily adaptable for mobile usage.) So, it Qualcomm doesn't own CDMA, who does? At least for 3G, its primarily Nokia, InterDigital, Ericsson, and Texas Instruments. Everybody knows about ERICY, NOK and TI, I hope, and investment information is readily available on those companies. (I own some shares of each -- plus Qualcomm.) However, if one wants information about InterDigital (up almost 40% on 4 times normal volume the past two sessions), I have found that it is a little harder to find. Because it is not readily available otherwise, I've put together a paper on InterDigital that expands on the ideas above. It's available for anyone interested at: telecomtechstocks.com Very long on Nokia! Bill Dalglish