To: marketing1 who wrote (29618 ) 8/8/2000 5:07:51 PM From: Keith Feral Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 54805 What a great post. Unfortunately, I disagree with everything you said!! <gg> First of all, I think that QCOM has put together one of the most impressive marketing campaigns of any company in the past ten years except for bigger gorillas like Microsoft. Now, I would like to say why it is time to fire everyone that is not tied into the direct sales channel between QCOM and it's licensees. I'm not sure that it is QCOM's job to spend money on marketing at all. I know that I risk sounding naive, but QCOM's technology should be marketed by it's customers like Lucent, Sprint PCS, Nortel, Motorola, KDDI, Sk Telecom and other members of the CDMA Developemnt group that are engaged in selling products through the wireless distribution channel. Why should QCOM shareholders suffer a bloated and unnecessary marketing budget? I would be pissed if QCOM started spending a lot of money on stupid and expensive commericials like The Balcony. Now that QCOM is truly an equipment supplier to the telecomm community at large, they should not be responsible for picking up the bill for marketing Nokia's phones. It is a beautiful situation for QCOM which could even argue that marketing is a conflict of interest. What phone would QCOM decide to put on a marketing banner? Further, I doubt if any one would ever pick up on a picture of QCOM's ASICS. Marketing for QCOM should be squared at their direct customers which include Motorola, Audiovox, Lucent, Nortel and other companies that are making cell phones and infrastructure equipment. A broad based marketing plan for QCOM would be a distastrous financial drain on QCOM's budget and bottom line. As the transition to 3G CDMA is a no brainer, I would love to see QCOM slash a couple thousand jobs to reduce their overhead expense at QCOM. Apart from the engineers and sales force, everyone needs to go. There is almost no need for anyone left in corporate except to count the royalty checks and invest them in Treasuries. The drag on QCOM's share price this year has been the direct result of underwhelming revenue and EPS growth from last years staggering improvement. Mostly, the weak revenue growth the direct result of QCOM's declining price of ASICS. Now that ASP's have improved for ASICS, unit growth should deliver much more favorable results for shareholders as the transition to 1Xrtt & GPS is complete. Also, the development of UMTS based WCDMA networks throughout Europe and Asia will greatly expand the opportunities for CDMA based products. QCOM has all the attention it needs. We just need to get through this last stretch in September to start benefiting from the much anticipated launch of new equipment for wireless internet services and GPS technologies. For the life of me, I still haven't figured out why QCOM has not found a single PC company in the US to start including wireless modems in their laptops. Also, it would be nice if PALM put together a wireless PDA for Verizon and Sprint. These are strategic no brainers. Call them marketing suggestions if you want. I don't think you need a support staff of marketing geeks to figure this out. Get someone over to Dell, Compaq, Gateway, IBM, and Apple. Don't let the guys come back until they get a contract with these companies. All the best!!