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To: Uncle Frank who wrote (9470)	11/9/2001 3:02:44 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10934

OT re QCOM: Yes, I'm aware of that history, and I agree completely that it is part of their culture. From what I've seen and read, most companies would rather die than change their culture. It usually takes a "near-death experience" to get a company to even consider changing its culture. Once a company has developed a culture, it gets perpetuated, even when the management changes. In the very beginning, you're right, they had to take those risks, it was necessary. It was a huge gamble, and they won. And investors who bought the stock at that time, also took a huge gamble, and also won. It must be understood, though,that the investing environment has changed, and probably changed for many years to come. The easy availability of capital, the very lax lending standards, the willingness of investors to put no risk premium on these gambles, the underlying conditions that prevailed from the mid-1990s into 2000, that's all over, and it isn't coming back. Not next year, or the year after, or probably for many years to come. So, the underlying conditions in which QCOM's corporate culture initially succeeded, those conditions don't exist any more. In addition, the company is no longer a startup trying to prove a technology that no one but a few visionaries believes in. It is now an incumbent company with a widely-adopted standard. It shouldn't be taking those gambles any more. It shouldn't need to. I'm hopeful that, if the recession ends by 2003, fewer of these gambles are going to get into trouble (and the gap between proforma and GAAP closes). And, I'm hopeful that QCOM's management has at least learned a bit of caution, from the string of failures in the recent past. But hope is not a good strategy for an investor. And I think that, perhaps, there is more than a little amount of "hero worship" in your view of Dr. J. IMO, his track record is this: He started out by making a huge gamble and winning. Actually, he had a string of successes early on (like Snaptrax). Then, the underlying conditions in the industry changed, and the position of the company in the industry changed. But he didn't change his methods, and, since then, he has had a string of failures, failures so large as to wipe out years of profits. And there is little evidence that he has yet changed his methods. I don't see any "acumen". I see a gambler who won big, the first few hands he played, but the dealer is now steadily taking it back.