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To: Getch who wrote (78973)8/24/2000 12:34:27 PM
From: Keith Feral  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 152472
 
Spinco will see ASIC shipments move from 60 million units this year to an estimated 100 million units next year. Semiconducter sales for the wireless industry will grow from 10 billion to 50 billion annually by 2004. With the cyclical bottom in ASIC prices as cdmaOne evolves to 1X, HDR, GPS and multimedia, the revenue growth for Spinco will be much stronger next year. IMO, this is the perfect time to spin off the ASIC division.



To: Getch who wrote (78973)8/24/2000 1:14:20 PM
From: qorilla_watcher  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 152472
 
The SPINCO share price at IPO is minimized by only 10 percent being offered. "Time is of the essence". If all goes well when the IPO is distributed 6 months hence, the Parent should get a commensurate share price spike like COMS did this past winter.



To: Getch who wrote (78973)8/24/2000 1:16:13 PM
From: qorilla_watcher  Respond to of 152472
 
The SPINCO share price at IPO is minimized by only 10 percent being offered. "Time is of the essence". If all goes well when the IPO is distributed 6 months hence, the Parent should get a commensurate share price spike like COMS did this past winter.



To: Getch who wrote (78973)8/24/2000 2:42:16 PM
From: Sully-  Respond to of 152472
 
Investors See Wireless Through a Glass Darkly

NEW YORK -- At an investment conference held recently by a large Internet infrastructure company, a top marketing executive was gushing about the exploding demand for wireless access to data.

In Japan, he said, you'll soon be able to watch a soccer game on a cellphone.

Nobody laughed out loud. Even here in the aftermath of the great collapse of dreams for e-everything, no one snickered. It was as though none of the hundreds of stock analysts and portfolio managers wondered why anyone would want to watch a soccer game on a 1.5-inch screen.

Maybe they were in no mind to question. During the coffee break, half stood alone with their own wireless phones and e-mail devices. They gave up the traditional practice of pumping one another for market insights and stock tips.

Or maybe it was that descriptions of tech breakthroughs have become numbingly common, blurring Wall Street's vaunted vision of what's really ahead.

The markets are certainly having trouble seeing how many wireless tools will be sold profitably. Stocks of wireless phone makers and their suppliers of semiconductors have been up and down enough this year to make investors seasick. They've upset the Nasdaq and will likely continue to do so.

Pulling the stocks up are the obviously increasing numbers of users and the designs of companies to create demand, companies ranging from Intel to Nokia to tiny upstart Research In Motion. Pulling them down is a glut of inventory of phones and components that will take months to unload at cut rates.

The big three makers, Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola, together increased their inventories by 50% to $4 billion worth in six months, says Fred Hickey of The High-Tech Strategist in Nashua, N.H. They and their suppliers simply went overboard in planning to sell 500 million phones worldwide this year, nearly twice as many as last year. Now they're scaling back.

Brokerages are divided on whether the semiconductor stocks will be OK. At the least, they'll be volatile until October as companies step up earnings warnings in two weeks, UBS Warburg says.

''It is a hotly contested topic,'' says Dreyfus' Tim Ghriskey, who is bullish on Nokia, Motorola and Qualcomm. Five years ago, tech debates raged about personal computer sales growth and the impact of Windows 95. Now PC growth is slow. The debates are about wireless and the coming technology capable of delivering Internet video. ''You can smell the future in handheld wireless,'' he says.

A lot of the smell is coming from NTT DoCoMo in Japan. Since the company started always-on wireless Internet phone service in February 1999, it has signed 10 million subscribers and spawned competitors who have signed another 5 million, so that 12% of the population gets wireless data. Soon more Japanese will reach the Internet by wireless phone than by PC.

''That will be a first in the world,'' says Alfredo Jollon, analyst at Janus Funds, an early and major investor in DoCoMo. The company aims for much more, saying people will put location-tracking phones on dogs.

News that DoCoMo has discussed partnerships with phone carriers and Internet service providers around the world, including AOL and SBC, has added to the excitement. ''You can see DoCoMo teaching the world how to do this,'' Jollon says. The world's wireless destiny now seems so clear that reports of clothes embedded with phones get ink.

At the least, there's trouble for investors in the timing. Stock prices got ahead of the technology. The Japanese won't start third-generation technology until spring. European countries are just now auctioning the necessary frequencies for use in 2002. The hodgepodge of U.S. standards is delaying appealing features. The third generation won't be here before 2004.

Also, unlike the early 1990s when Windows icons arrived to expand PC use, wireless Internet is emerging after Americans have bought lots of gadgets. Consumer research is showing a building tech backlash. Slowing U.S. economic growth and doubling of heating bills also will slow wireless growth.

This isn't to say that wireless won't be the next big thing in technology. New display screens, perhaps worn like eyeglasses, will eventually make soccer games visible by wireless. But that's years away. Meanwhile, the spills and thrills are in the stocks.

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