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

To: gdichaz who wrote (37486)	1/3/2001 4:30:04 PM
From: Eric L	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 54805

Cha2, re: QCOM - Wireless Facts - "Through A Glass Darkly" aka "The Devil is in the Details" << What we need to try to accomplish is to figure out as best we can what the "facts" will be in both the short and long term future. >> Yes. Agreed. Back in my wireless days, I was fortunate to have access to some of the good Research Agencies published reports. The good reports cost in the $2000 to $5,000 range and having just one can be misleading. None of the major wireless vendors rely on just one. Few of the financial analysts do either, (but some do, and you sometimes wonder if some of the analysts really get into the details either). Ed Snyder is not to popular with any of us Qualcommers, but let me tell you, I listen carefully to what he has to say. His technical background stands him in good steed. I'm not positive yet, but I do not think he has as strong a negative bias towards QUALCOMM as the mother house he works for. He is pretty darned sharp. he was right on this summer and maybe did us a favor by deflating us early, and if you listened carefully there was some positive stuff in with the negative. I no longer have access. Instead I rely on the summaries available publicly from EMC, Strategis, Yankee Group, Cahners In-Stat, Forward Concepts and others. The "Devil is in the Details" and the Details are NOT in the summaries. Sometimes you scratch your head and ask yourself, "why does this agency forecast so much lower than this one?". It is often tempting to take the higher number. It can be suicide. I like the "upside" provided by the lower number. Forecasting is every bit as much of an art, as it is a science. One of the great (wireless) investing takeaways for me from dealing with subscriber reports and forecasts vocationally, was that I learned some of the nuances, and how to interpret trends (although this has its own risk because you get cocky, or lazy, or become over analytical). The data source, is most important. Garbage in, Garbage out (GIGO). EMC is the BEST in the business, and they earn every cent that GSMA (and others pay them). << Ben's and your keeping us up on the standards process >> Of late Ben has put a lot more time into it than I have. He deserves an applause. Slacker really gets into subscriber tracking as well, and the raw numbers are not as important as what's inside them, and what is driving them. I realized something today (when I read the SSB report) that I should have recollected when we looked at the upsurge of GSM & TDMA in Q1 & Q2 (while CDMA was trending down). It relates to forecasting by the carriers to the majors (Big Three), and component shortages. BTW: SSB is VERY strong on wireless (and other tech arenas). Their reports are VERY valuable, IMO, but not to be taken stand alone. - Eric -