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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: saukriver who wrote (34203)	11/2/2000 12:11:43 PM
From: carolm	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 54805

Hello, Forgive me if I am addressing this post to the wrong person, but I can recall much discussion some time ago about IDCC and its claims on CDMA patents. I recently received a flyer in the mail advertising Tech Stocks 2001, a technology picking conference in Las Vegas with keynote speakers including George Gilder, Michael Murphy, Fred Briggs, Harry Newton among others. There was a list of companies that were to be presented and they included IDCC as well as WIND, KOPN, AMCC, AVNX. After hearing the discussion about IDCC on this board, I had dismissed them as a serious contender, but presented within this context, it makes me wonder. The blurb on them stated: "Interdigital designs and develops chips and guts for mobile phones, personal digital assistants, laptops, digital cameras, etc. It makes money by engineering products for wireless phone and system builders and by licensing out its patented technology. It's working on application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) for 3G wireless phones." I know NOK is now selling CDMA phones to Verison, and I have seen their full page ads in my newspaper. These apparently do not have a chip licensed from Q, and they are not 1X (someone dissected the phone and reported to the QCOM thread) It looks to me like they are perhaps a rising chimp like AMD to Intel. If any one knows any more up to date info on what they are up to or is planning on attending the conference on Dec. 4-6, perhaps it would be worthwhile to re-open the discussion. My gut feeling is that this is why Nokia is holding back. Carol

To: saukriver who wrote (34203)	11/2/2000 12:11:59 PM
From: mmbw	Respond to of 54805

saukriver, thanks for the clarification. It will be interesting to see what happens in January with Spinco. Also how many companies license from QCOM over the next several months. Martha

To: saukriver who wrote (34203)	11/3/2000 12:51:54 AM
From: voop	Respond to of 54805

Saukriver asked me to update the thread on KOPN which reported last week on Oct 26. corporate-ir.net As a reminder, KOPN is an interesting company with products geared primarily for wireless by producing GaAs HBT chips and full color miniature flat panel display with resolution of a VGA monitor, with increasing emphasis on fiberoptics, particularly in producing InGaP chips for OC-192. The company recently formally announced a new fiberoptic division. corporate-ir.net In a nutshell, the quarter had some serious but not lethal hiccoughs. Revenue was sequentially flat because this former king of CDMA power amplifiers felt the crunch of decreased Korean handset subsidies and the resultant downturn in Conextant which accounted for almost 50% of revenue in the past years. To the company's credit, they have ramped up GSM power amplifiers business with MItsubishi to the point where GSM accounted for 40% of HBT sales when there were none one year ago. The company is building a second assembly plant in Taunton, Mass to increase capacity and seemed unflinching its need to do this in the CC. corporate-ir.net corporate-ir.net corporate-ir.net Fiberoptic sales were revealing regarding the OC-48 and OC-192 business to Nortel. Dr Fan, CEO, indicated in Question and Answer that KOPN was the sole supplier to Nortel for OC-192. In addition, Nortel has a new fab for OC-192 coming on line in the first quarter which will triple NT's capacity. Also selling chips to HP-Agilent for testing equipment. CyberDisplay was also constrained in the last month of the quarter due to the quality of the glass supply there were receiving from vendors. They are fixing the problem this quarter with those vendors and have procured alternative suppliers as well. CyberDisplay, the ultra-small high resolution flat panel display, secured key wins in Sept 99 with the digital cameras by Mustek and added Samsung and Panasonic to JVC with camcorders now shipping with the product. corporate-ir.net Kopin stated goal was to produce 300,000/month (breakeven according to CC) but due to supply constraints they are only producing 200,000/months. Management estimates they will be back to 300,000 by early first quarter 2001. They produced their 1,000,000 starting from none last year. corporate-ir.net Kopin is increasing capacity through its Tiawanese display assembly partner Unipac. corporate-ir.net A major announcement occurred just prior to the CC whereby the have reached an agreement to have their CyberDisplay integrated with Access of Japan's browser. Access controls 70% of the widely successful DoCoMo i-mode phone. This collaboration, called BrowserScope(TM), "will combine Kopin's miniature CyberDisplay product with ACCESS' NetFront software to provide an integrated solution for bringing video-enabled Internet access to 3G (third generation) wireless phones, camcorders, personal computers and a range of other devices. By Web-enabling these devices, BrowserScope will create a new communications paradigm for personal digital equipment and consumer electronics. These new devices will now serve as input devices, allowing users to trade emails, share photographs and video, from their wireless phones, digital cameras and camcorders - over the Internet." corporate-ir.net Another major announcement was the purchase of Super Epitaxial Inc whose expertise is in material sciences such as Nitrides and using OMVCD. "Super Epitaxial Products (SEP), a leader in research and development of optoelectronic materials and devices, has demonstrated state-of-the-art technology in growing nitrides and other semiconductor materials by organometallic chemical vapor deposition (OMCVD), resulting in excellent materials for optoelectronic devices including vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs), light-emitting diodes, and photodetectors, which complement Kopin's existing HBT transistor products. Furthermore, nitride materials have potential applications in high-power microwave devices as well as improving current GaAs HBT products." corporate-ir.net This is a fascinating development which brings, IMO, KOPN into Cree's bailiwick even more than before as the nitride expertise smacks of blue lasers and the development of vertical cavity surface emitting lasers, photodiodes and other power equipment as well. Recall that CyberDisplay is competing with Microvision, a company part owned by CREE. Bottom line, this company managed to survive this quarter and next with conexant problems and still could have a killer appliance in CyberDisplay. They continue to invest in their future by rapidly expanding capacity in both businesses and will have new blood in Super epitaxial purchase as well as higher a respected MIT PhD in optoelectronics. I think they have to get the CyberDisplay going with the suppliers (they said they have) and keep a chugging with burgeoning OC-192 and HBT for power amplifiers. They must continue to unhinge from CNXT as they are too dependent on revenues. corporate-ir.net I was disappointed there were no mention of Smartcards at the CC. I will post my CC notes or send them PM if anyone is interested. Voop