Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: A.J. Mullen who wrote (4715)	11/18/2000 1:20:53 AM
From: John Biddle	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 196961

I just got back from a week at Comdex, 2 days of which were spent listening to various panels of experts talk about various aspects of wireless. There were two things said which were agreed to by all panel members which surprised me. First, in agreement with the Motley Fool writer quoted above, they were sure that 3G was going to be quite late. Even more they were sure it was going to be quite disappointing. There were frequent comments about the extreme hype being foisted on the general public by the operators and equipment vendors. These "experts" were sure that the speeds of 144 kbps, 384 kbps and 2 mbps were much like the old stereo specs wherein the numbers were technically true, but defined in a way that no one actually ever achieved them or could achieve them in the real world. There was no argument about this except from 1 guy from Qualcomm who didn't present himself all that well (not a great public speaker) but did cover the numbers and specifically countered the claim about the far in the future 3G rollout by reminding everyone that Korea began rolling out 1X on Oct 1 and it met the 3G requirements and was not 2.5G as some would claim. This belief didn't seem to be about one upgrade path to 3G vs another, they lumped all 3G together and didn't seem to believe that anyone had an advantage over anyone else. The comment by the Q guy was essentially ignored. The second thing which surprised me came up in a discussion on location technology. Again, wide agreement on the panel that this stuff will eventually work, but that for now it's nearly snakeoil. The idea is that it will tell you you're in Manhattan, say, or San Diego, but that's about it for many years to come. They thought this was OK, though, because for much of what they thought you'd need in the early days, it was good enough. This obviously doesn't jibe with the stories I've read about Snaptrak and the Sprint trials. Anyone care to comment? My take on this is that either I've been a sucker for believing that one wireless technology is not the same as all the others, or there will be one hell of an upside when Wall Street discovers that Q and CDMA have no peer. I'm staying long.