re; QCOM - Irwin the Brave or Irwin the Knave?
<< You also brought up a question regarding IJ's credibility which I'll have you know is the first from a Q shareholder >>
I did indeed publicly question Dr. Jacobs (father and son) judgement in presenting a slide that was composed the way it was, to two technology forums sponsored by two investment banks.
Dr Irwin Jacobs is revered by many QUALCOMM shareholders. He is not universally revered.
I admire the man. I do not revere him. I do not consider him infallible.
<< CDG in the nasty article ... and then this comment from Cingular about a lot of Qualcomm Hype ... >>
Nasty articles about Qualcomm hype are not new.
"Irwin the Brave" was the title of a section of a very good 5 part article called "Qualcomm Hits the Big Time" published by Fortune Magazine this year. It stated:
The standards war forced Jacobs to become a public advocate for CDMA, a role that didn't come naturally. "In college, the one course I did poorly in was public speaking," he says. "But if I know what I'm talking about, I'm okay." As he won followers for CDMA, critics accused the ex-professor of combativeness, of exaggerating the technology's virtues, of being unwilling to compromise -- all charges he denies. Says Jacobs: "People have referred to it as a religious war. I always tried to keep it rational."
That article quoted Andrew Cole who was more recently quoted in the article "C in TDMA", that you so much enjoyed. <g>
"Qualcomm is the most overvalued stock known to man. The share price is built on the belief that all new phones will have some kind of CDMA. That is a big question mark."
I guess we know which side of the controversy Andrew Cole is on.
An article in Fortune a year earlier stated:
"For much of the past decade, Dr. Irwin Jacobs has been at war. It began in the early 1990s when the professor-turned-CEO of Qualcomm discovered that a certain military technology could be developed into an effective standard to operate cell phones for civilians. Instead of being praised for his breakthrough, Jacobs battled skeptical naysayers, most notably a Swedish-based nemesis named Ericsson, which was promoting its own competing standard to control the guts and interoperability of cell phones."
And there IS a controversy although hopefully it is subsiding.
Perhaps you and others here did not live through the "Holy Wars".
The "Holy Wars" happened. They may have subsided. They are not over.
I look forward to the day when they are truly over and the combatants are truly "harmonized".
I lived through them. I was an industry participant, a foot soldier working both camps, and I also lived through them as an investor (in NOK, then QCOM, now both).
Cha2 did too, as an investor. So did Maurice Winn, Ramsey Su, John Goren, GO*QCOM, Jim Lurgio, DaveMG, Clark Hare, engineer, Gregg Powers, Slacker, Tero Kuittinen and many other long time denizens of the SI wireless threads, and long time Qualcomm investors (well, I'm not sure about Tero, but one never knows <g>).
Dr. Irwin Jacobs did too, as an active combatant, and corporate leader.
Dr. Irwin Jacobs has been the subject of much controversy. He has frequently been accused of hype, and he has been accused of overpromising and under delivering. It will come up again, I assure you.
Such is the way of combat and this is an economic war with trillions of dollars at stake.
Combatants and participants have long memories. Wounds do not heal easily.
Old accusations and hoary chestnuts get dragged out of the fire.
<< Cingular's CTO's comments about 1X being more spectrally efficient as being Qualcomm hype struck me as a serious blow. Would love to see some counter punches to that. >>
CDG did all Qualcommers a favor about one month ago when they FINALLY removed a very exaggerated statement from their redesigned web site.
That statement said "1. Capacity increases<of 8 to 10 times that of an AMPS analog system and 4 to 5 times that of a GSM system... . It now says simply 1. Capacity increases of 8 to 10 times that of an AMPS analog system.
cdg.org
Mq and I did battle with a passionate IDCCer over this in July, when he dragged out references to one of the early public crucifixions of Dr. Jacobs, an article by Quentin Hardy called "Are Claims Hope or Hype?" that appeared in the WSJ, in September 1996, in support of his premise that Qualcomm was prone to overpromising and underdelivering:
127.0.0.1:3456/SI/stocktalk/readmsg.aspx?msgid=13983391
Ira Brodsky fired back this letter to WSJ:
127.0.0.1:3456/SI/stocktalk/readmsg.aspx?msgid=13864936&s=Hardy
Ira Brodsky defended Dr. Jacobs again a year later when he responded to a Telephony article called "Blind Faith", by Steve Titch with the classic "Blinders":
127.0.0.1:3456/SI/stocktalk/readmsg.aspx?msgid=13984168&s=Blind
For some additional background on the "Holy Wars" (and the sometimes controversial Dr. Jacobs, and QUALCOMM) I highly recommend reading these articles:
From "Fortune" (February 1999) "The Battle to Control Your Cell Phone"
library.northernlight.com
From "Upside" (February 11, 2000) - "So Where is the Wireless Web?":
upside.com
From "Upside" (May 09, 2000) - "Qualcomm Reborn As Wireless Player":
upside.com
From "Fortune" (May 15, 2000) - Qualcomm Hits the Big Time:
fortune.com
This final article I'll cite here is from "Cahners Electronic Business". It does not dwell on the "Holy Wars":
eb-mag.com
It contains this Jacobs quote (that is music to my ears):
"There's never been any question in our minds over that. That's not to say others won't get some of their content included, but the fundamental CDMA intellectual property comes from Qualcomm."
It also focuses on Dr. Irwin Jacobs many strengths in a section called "Intellectual Ferment".
>> Irwin Jacobs spent the first decade of his professional life in academia, teaching electrical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and, later, at the University of California, San Diego. It’s no surprise, then, that after turning to a business career, hes tried to duplicate some of the things he liked best about university life.
As CEO of San Diego-based Qualcomm Inc., Jacobs strives to create a stimulating environment, which he believes is essential for innovation. "We can't achieve it quite as well, but we do try to keep some kind of an intellectual ferment around the company," he says. Even as Qualcomm’s workforce has grown into the thousands, he’s tried to preserve a relatively flat management structure, and to foster open communications through extensive e-mail use. "The company’s size means that I can no longer walk the corridors and see people, but I do it, in effect, by reading the e-mail," he says.
Qualcomm regularly appears on lists of the best U.S. companies to work for, and part of the appeal has been its liberal stock-option grants. Their value has soared along with the company’s stock in the past year and, as one employee notes: "There are a lot of new millionaires in San Diego now."
Jacobs describes his management style simply: "We try to find very good people and then give them lots of freedom." Martha Dennis, president and CEO of San Diego software company Wave Ware Communications, says that approach has remained consistent for the 30 years she’s known Jacobs. "His basic belief is, or at least it used to be, that good people manage themselves," she says. Dennis adds that while Jacobs always preferred working in the trenches with the engineering staff, he had better business skills than the average technology entrepreneur.
That combination of technical and business savvy has served Jacobs well in building two successful technology companies. He and fellow engineering professor Andrew Viterbi started the first, Linkabit, in 1968. Their consulting company proved adept at developing both military and civilian communications equipment and by the time they left 17 years later, the company had 2,000 employees, and $150 million in revenue.
Things changed in 1980, however, after M/A-Com Inc. of Burlington, MA, purchased Linkabit. While Jacobs and his fellow managers stayed on for almost five years, they chafed under the new owners. "It just wasn't the same, being a part of a big company," says Harvey White, who worked closely with Jacobs at Linkabit, and, later, as president of Qualcomm. Says Dennis, who held open the door for Jacobs the night he resigned: "I think he learned that he was never going to sell his company lock stock and barrel again. He had lost control - a lot of the decisions were no longer up to him."
Three months later, when Jacobs and five former Linkabit colleagues launched Qualcomm, they had no doubts the new company would succeed. "We always knew we were going to win, it was just a case of how much and how soon," says White. Still, Jacobs concedes that Qualcomm’s growth has far exceeded his dreams. "We hoped we might be able to do as well as Linkabit had done. But we’ve obviously surpassed that by quite a bit," he says.
These days Jacobs focuses mainly on long-range issues, while leaving Qualcomm’s operational details in the hands of President Richard Sulpizio. At age 66 and a billionaire several times over, Jacobs could certainly afford to retire to his oceanfront house and indulge his passions for music, art, Democratic politics and philanthropy. For years, he’s been promising Joan, his wife of 45 years, that he plans to spend more time with her, their four sons and nine grandchildren. But he’s still having too much fun at Qualcomm to step aside. "As long as it’s interesting, and there are exciting things to do, I’ll try to stay active," he vows. - R.A.- <<
As Andrew Seybold recently said:
"If anyone 'gets' the new economy, Qualcomm’s chief executive, Dr. Irwin Jacobs does. It’s about ideas and about change. It’s not about making physical things."
That's the Dr. Irwin Jacobs I admire.
Now if we could just tone down George Gilder.
Now, since the New Millennium has dawned, I declare ...
... and end to the Holy Wars.
As the article said "If Irwin Jacobs can shake hands with Ericsson, anything is possible".
There, we've excorcised the Bear and put an end to the Holy Wars.
Say. "Irwin the Brave", and don't let articles like "C in TDMA" work you up.
Best.
- Eric - |
