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

To: Michael Allard who wrote (867)	7/14/2000 7:57:05 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 197653

<You wrote "(forget about what is superior, in a lot of cases it doesn't matter)" I think investing in QCOM is at least a 25% - 50% bet that technology does matter in this case. I would agree that there are ample examples of markets where the best technology does not win out. > I cannot think of an example where a superior technology has not creamed the opposition. Yes, yes, Beta blah blah blah VHS, Apple blah blah blah vs IBM/MSFT, Ferrari vs Ford but all those examples exclude the fact that price is a very, very important factor and a single technology advantage is not enough - the overall technology package has to be better at a cheaper price. Of course gold-plated 30 Megabit per second Rolls Royces are better technology, but the price of that gold-plating is what matters so a Hyundai will sell many more and make more profit. What the spectrum auction in the UK [and even C-block] showed was that Q! has done a great job. The whole point of CDMA was to improve capacity with no quality disadvantage and perhaps even advantage. Since spectrum is turning out to be very valuable, that enhances the value of Q! technology and makes time to market and the cost of spectrum-wasting technology such as GPRS an insurmountable problem. If spectrum in UK was valuable, wait and see how valuable super-crowded China turns out to be. The spectrum prices in Mexico showed how valuable spectrum is in the big smoke and how cheap it is in the outback. The higher the demand, the higher the value and what imode has shown is how much demand WWeb will produce. SMS is another glimpse of the demand which will come. It is going to be big and it is going to be soon. Korea will NOT waste their huge advantage on CDMA. They will push it flat out and will NOT dither around waiting for vaporware W-CDMA. Yes, vaporware. The definition of vaporware absolutely applies to W-CDMA. In fact it still remains in the VapourWear category, which old-time readers will recognize as a different kettle of fish. 1X-EV will beat jumbled up voice and data due to lower spectrum cost and no voice latency. Andrew Viterbi saw that one coming. That's another ooops by Motorola [mixing voice and data]. It's so great to have people like those CDMA inventors roaming the planet. Hooray for them. The weird thing is that people on Bastille Day will sell Q! at something like $60 when the WWeb tsunami will make the cellphone revolution look like a ripple on a duckpond. In two years, they'll be kicking themselves for believing [once again] the nonsense about Korea being a problem for Q! Some people probably still think China will go GSM, Bleeding EDGE and stuff. They think China will tie themselves up in knots to avoid using a really good technology which is cheap - well, that's the silly idea people are putting out. China has had a 25% increase in exports - they will be spending that money and CDMA would be a handy thing to spend some of it on. Mqurice PS: A place where a 'better' technology might miss out is when not part of a network effect. But that is because people buy benefits, not technology and a network is the benefit in that case. Why buy a rotten little network even if it is a bit cheaper although a better technology from a gadget point of view? Anyone got an example of a better technology failing against a worse and more expensive technology? VHS need not apply. I think people just accept that idea too casually. It's not true.