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Technology Stocks : Qualcomm Moderated Thread - please read rules before posting -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: foundation who wrote (26394)	9/4/2002 9:55:20 AM
From: foundation	Respond to of 196562

Q&A stuff - SnapTrak Thornley appeared to express certainty that SnapTrak GPS would be used by GSM vendors (plural) in Europe. ... and that royalties for SnapTrak are minimal, with the upside in BREW location based services. hmmm...

To: foundation who wrote (26394)	9/4/2002 10:14:23 AM
From: slacker711	Respond to of 196562

I can't recall the precise language, but I don't think Thornley endorsed the '05 release date. In general, his comments were not of an endorsing nature - more of a skeptical "we'll see". Thornley did make some comments that Qualcomm thought DV was unneccessary.....but he also seemed to acknowledge the fact that DV would be rolled out in '05. I'll have to listen to the replay to see if I was reading to much into his comments. Slacker

To: foundation who wrote (26394)	9/4/2002 10:23:10 AM
From: carranza2	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 196562

What is the advantage of DV? One can keep the data and the voice going at the same time? Seems a small improvement for the price. BWTFDIK

To: foundation who wrote (26394)	9/4/2002 9:48:01 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 196562

Hmmm. 1xEV-DV in limbo. <Thornley also commented at some length on why Q is hesitant about the development of dv... ... that it provides essentially the same performance as do +1x (for voice) with an new, complex technology... and how implementation may not prove cost effective. The inference I gleaned is that Q is unsure if dv will evolve to commercial use. They expect 1xEV-DV to roll-out in '05. I can't recall the precise language, but I don't think Thornley endorsed the '05 release date. In general, his comments were not of an endorsing nature - more of a skeptical "we'll see". > Ben, if we go back a few years, I found a skulking group of electrical engineers at Auckland University fiddling with OFDM. Asking the technology gang here what the heck, we came up with 'ummm, well, probably not that great for voice'. So, at an annual meeting, somebody [I forget who] asked Andrew Viterbi what QUALCOMM was up to with OFDM - the answer was a kind of offhand "Well, we might have a few patents in it or have done a bit of work or something". No elaboration. I can't recall the exact reply, but it wasn't very helpful and sounded more like a 'no comment' reply. Then, a year or so later, Andrew Viterbi announced he was leaving QUALCOMM and joining up with Flarion for OFDM. Even longer ago, if I remember rightly, there was quite a lot of to and fro about data and voice fitting together in CDMA in the form of 1xEV-DV type applications. Andrew Viterbi was very much in favour of data having to run separately. So, it seems that his joining Flarion was a continuation of his idea that data needed to be run separately and that OFDM is the best way to do it. QUALCOMM presumably didn't have enough grunt in the OFDM department to do the job or maybe there was a philosophical difference with 1xEV-DV being judged as a good enough compromise to tie data and voice together in one deal. Not optimum for either, but good enough in an attempt to give subscribers a cost-effective package and enable service providers to economically upgrade. Now, maybe 1xEV-DV is a bit like W-CDMA and not as easy as pie after all. So, where to if 1xEV-DO is the end of the road? I suppose it means that channels will be allocated according to instantaneous demand. Is that a bad thing? I don't know. Maybe OFDM and Bluetooth and 80211 [abc] and 1xEV-DO can sit happily alongside voice in a single ASIC. The trend seems to be that ASIC technology is enabling multimode to squeeze into a single ASIC without any undue drama or cost. With radioOne saving half the gizzards and methanol fuel cells and swanky new ASICs with all aboard there seems to be a clear technological development trajectory available at reasonable cost, with okay size and good [unlimited] battery life. Methanol is super dense energy. By the time the ASICs are ripe, so should fuel cells be ready. Meanwhile, we seem to be coming up to a 2005 hiccough - or dead end - with 1xEV-DV. It wouldn't be amazing if Andrew Viterbi had the right idea [assuming he in fact had it]. Mqurice