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

To: 100cfm who wrote (37139)	12/28/2000 10:49:46 PM
From: Rick	Respond to of 54805

December 28, 2000 Single-Page Format STATE OF THE ART Slower Than Its Predecessor: Pentium 4 By DAVID POGUE Remember the old song that goes, "I love you, darling, don't you know?/As sure as winter brings the snow,/ As Windows ne'er can be surpassed,/ And each year's chips outpace the last?" Neither do I. Besides, even if such a song existed, each line would need an overhaul to reflect changing times. For starters, funny things have been happening to both global weather patterns and Microsoft these days. As for the last line, it's always been true that whatever PC you buy now will be made obsolete by next year's faster models. But now the unthinkable has happened: the Intel Corporation has released a new processor chip, the Pentium 4, that's actually slower than the Pentium III. Yet a PC containing the slower Pentium 4 chip costs $500 to $700 more than a PC containing a Pentium III or Athlon chip. To make matters worse, the Pentium 4 requires a special kind of memory (Rambus memory, or RDRAM), which costs about $250 more per 128 megabytes than standard memory. (Intel plans to remedy that drawback with a new Pentium 4 model in late 2001 that won't need special memory.) nytimes.com - Fred

To: 100cfm who wrote (37139)	12/29/2000 9:26:32 AM
From: Eric L	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 54805

100, << I have to say now that you've told me all the reasons I don't want to own Q can you tell me why Q is a major core holding of your portfolio. >> I hope that you did not interpret any remarks I've made here as a reason why YOU or anyone else should not hold QUALCOMM. Likewise, when I publish a Project Hunt report on Nokia I would not anticipate that you or others would rush out and add it to your portfolio. Anyone that is considering playing wireless should seriously consider holding QUALCOMM (or continuing to hold QUALCOMM). Wireless Mobile Telecom is dominated by committee based architecture. QUALCOMM is the rare Gorilla. When I invested in them on 1/5/99 I did so because not only did they have solid fundamentals, but CDMA was clearly in hypergrowth, cdmaOne was obviously proprietary open technology, and most importantly exactly one year earlier, ETSI had chosen wideband CDMA for the air interface of their third generation technology (UMTS). I had done sufficient DD to convince myself that CDMA (any flavor) had essential QUALCOMM IP, and that it would be very difficult for my vendor to work around that IP. None of that has changed. Changes to the general wireless landscape have occurred however. In late 1998 when I was doing serious DD on QUALCOMM (with the manual at my side) I made these assumptions: 1. That hypergrowth of cdmaOne would continue well into 2001 [Hypergrowth ceased 1 year earlier than I anticipated] 2. That growth of GSM and IS-136 TDMA would decline at the expense of cdmaOne. [Both have grown faster than I anticipated, particularly GSM. Both CDMA and GSM may benefit initially from the pending abrupt decline of IS-136 and CDMA will eventually benefit because it takes one non CDMA 3rd generation technology out of play] 3. I estimated that this hypergrowth would translate into a minimum of 20% market share for CDMA by end of 2003. [This appears unlikely to occur. cdmaOene/cdma2000 take up in China in 2002 or 2003 could change this] 4. That hypergrowth of cdmaOne could transition into hypergrowth of cdma overlays of the GSM "A-interface". [This does not appear to be likely to occur in the near future. GPRS is the 2.5G air interface and has a massive sign up] 5. That QUALCOMM would retain proprietary control of an open cdma architecture moving into 3rd generation. [QUALCOMM does not control W-CDMA architecture, and has had little or no influence on its development] 6. That QUALCOMM would take a dominant leadership position in determining the direction of 3rd Generation. [That has not yet occurred. I am not ruling it out] 1xEV remains a wild card and could affect my perspective on number 4 & 5 above at a future date. << Would you not consider the commercial availability of WCDMA as when the start of the data tornado should begin? >> No. The data tornado will commence with GPRS and 1xMC, Both are commercially available now. They are in limited deployment. Very limited in the case of 1xMC. The data tornado will begin (IMO) when they commence general deployment. That will commence in 2001 for GPRS, and early 2002 for 1xMC. General deployment of W-CDMA will probably commence in mid 2003. Obviously if W-CDMA is not commercially available till 2003 as some would suggest it will occur later. W-CDMA even when in general deployment will be initially be confined to major metro areas. This is somewhat analogous to the state of Broadband at the moment. Overall, I think that cdma bull Andrew Seybold has his wireless roadmap just about dead nuts on: wirelessroadmap.com << I hope it's not cause CDMA will be the dominant wireless interface in 2007! >> That too. <g> So I once thought it would be 2005. I got a little hooked on the "overlay strategy". When do you project that CDMA will be the dominant wireless radio interface? - Eric -