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Technology Stocks : Qualcomm Incorporated (QCOM) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ruffian who wrote (93039)	1/31/2001 1:16:44 PM
From: Cooters	Respond to of 152472

Countrywide Starts Wireless Real Estate Information Service --From AOl.-- Cooters Calabasas, California, Jan. 31 (Bloomberg) -- Countrywide Credit Industries Inc., the largest independent U.S. mortgage lender, said it's offering a service that lets consumers and real estate agents get property records over mobile phones and other handheld wireless devices. Countrywide, based in Calabasas, California, said it's offering the service with cellular phone company Sprint Corp. and HomeGain.com, a housing-related Internet site based in Emeryville, California. If a property's records are available on the Internet, potential buyers or agents will be able to receive home valuations, current tax assessments, property specifics that include the number of bedrooms, and mortgage rates via Internet- enabled cellular telephones or handheld wireless devices such as the Palm VII, made by Santa Clara-California based Palm Inc. ``For years, you either had to go to a real estate agent or an appraiser to get this information,'' said Bradley Inman, chief executive of HomeGain.com. ``Now, you can sit in your car at curb side, enter the address of a house and within seconds receive a free estimated value.'' Sprint PCS customers will have a direct link on their phone display for the Countrywide Web site that provides the information. Other Internet-enabled telephones will be able to access it as well, said Suzanne Lammers of Kansas City, Missouri- based Sprint PCS. The service will have information on about 42 million of the estimated 120 million homes in the U.S., Inman said. As property records are digitized, that number will increase, he said. Jan/31/2001 12:47 ET

To: Ruffian who wrote (93039)	1/31/2001 3:16:41 PM
From: David E. Taylor	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 152472

Ruffian: One of the feature articles in the February print version of Red Herring is entitled "The China Syndrome - Qualcomm's eight-year bid to enter China has become a matter of survival" (by Dan Briody). The overall tone of the article is negative/critical, main points made are: (1) Without China, QCOM is dead. (2) If China goes ahead, royalty rates will be 2.5% vs the 8% QCOM collects elsewhere. (3) QCOM is involved in dangerous politics in China, has no negotiating leverage, and has played into China's hands. (4) There is no guarantee that China Unicom will go ahead and build the promised CDMA network, and even if they do, there is no guarantee anyone would use it, since China's 69 million cellular users are 99% using GSM. (5) GSM is the network standard in "Europe and other parts of Asia", countries like Japan are migrating their networks to 3G, but they are using WCDMA, the "natural upgrade path for GSM". (6) Citing Matt Hoffman of Wit Soundview, QCOM will receive as much as 3% points less royalties from WCDMA than from CDMA 2000, regardless of what Dr. J claim, because Ericsson and others will collect their share. (7) AT&T's deal with NTT DoCoMo calling for a GSM network in the US for AWE and is a major defeat for QCOM. (8) "With no hope of establishing CDMA or CDMA 2000 in Europe, and its US market share threatened" (by AT&T), and many other countries already building their 3G networks, "Qualcomm may have already missed the starter's gun", and therefore see (1) above. Qualcomm has "gambled its future" on the "risky proposition" in China. Before anybody takes me to task for this post, I'm simply reporting what the article says. I'm not sure if Briody has an axe to grind with Qualcomm, if he just has a biased view of the wireless world, or if he simply interviewed a bunch of GSM proponents and doesn't really have any real facts. I just received my copy of Red Herring and I don't know when it hits the newstands, but it could have a short term negative effect. David T.