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

To: Stock Farmer who wrote (103583)	9/3/2001 1:16:51 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

John, for years it has seemed to me that QUALCOMM has deliberately kept profits growing a little bit [glitches like Globalstar notwithstanding and proforma stuff to confuse the issue and make it look better than it is, with a bit of PCSTEL financial engineering, thrown in for extra fun]. QUALCOMM has been a balancing act between the need to maintain technological development at a very high level, while operating the business in what the management believe is a prudent and financially responsible manner. They have no debt for example. They maintain increasing profits. They have put as much back into research and development as they could justify. If I remember rightly, rumour had it that there might even have been a bit of argument with Andrew Viterbi wanting more and Rich Sulpizio wanting to show profits [or something along those lines]. In 1999, the recognition that QUALCOMM was a money machine was made, boosted with telecosm mania and dot.com fever. I believe that was largely because they ensured profit growth [by limiting R&D spend]. The Ericsson agreement helped only in that some people worried that Ericsson might have had a hold on the intellectual property. I haven't yet got to the stage of even bothering about whether there is a bottom line or not. To me it's irrelevant [other than that it's in the ballpark of sensibly balanced, prudent and that stuff]. The growth which matters is the sales rate and knowing that those are profitable sales if pro forma stuff is taken into account and R&D is considered income [to some extent], while keeping an eye on how much is going on investments in all those interesting new things such as Graviton, inViso, NextWave, handspring, PacketVideo, SnapTrack, WirelessKnowledge, Windmast - hmm, I should get the whole lot and put them in a long list. Message 16291574 <<Fewer than one in ten of the 1.25 billion Chinese has a mobile phone, compared with four out of ten Americans and five out of ten Europeans.>> That is a strong guide to the demand for cellphones, whether people have got a lot of money or not. Close to home, young people in Auckland bankrupt themselves but will NOT go without a cellphone. It is a top priority manifestation of their life and personality. My argument for years has been that there are basic human needs. One of those is communication. That's why I argue that QUALCOMM is very resistant to economic mayhem. People will buy phones before nearly everything else. They might not use them a lot due to high minute charges, but they will have a phone. Even though China is supposed to be impoverished, rich Americans have only four times as many mobile phones per capita. That is proof of the desire for communication. Americans would have more mobile phones except for the fact that there are phones everywhere they go. As coverage and functionality improve and prices come down, more Americans will buy and hugely more Chinese. Cellphones in China here: Message 16291449 While India is worse off than China, by a long way now, it would perhaps take them only a decade or so to become cellphone addicts if the government dumped their 19th century socialist ideas which have held India in poverty for half a century since the British left. They got rid of the British but kept the worst of British ideas. My point is that there really are going to be nearly 6 billion people by 2010 of whom about 3 billion should be able to afford a CDMA service [give or take a billion or so]. A cellphone is a high priority purchase. Mq