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

To: Wyätt Gwyön who wrote (123850)	9/8/2002 2:42:15 PM
From: quartersawyer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

MM- <<Godot...so perhaps their earnings will jump up to $1.30 before they flatten out again for another stretch.>> I believe I jnderstand the "jump", but why the "flatten"ing for how long a "stretch"?

To: Wyätt Gwyön who wrote (123850)	9/8/2002 7:29:17 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 152472

Mucho, long ago, in the 1980s, Professor Cadogan took over BP's research division. It seemed to me that his primary interest was pure science. Profit was a tacky necessity. His idea seemed to be that BP's businesses would supply the cash and he'd have a heck of a lot of fun doing all sorts of science, which had limited application to BP's businesses. Scientists and engineers love 'figuring out, inventing and doing stuff'. That takes serious money these days. I've been a paid-up fan club member for QUALCOMM spending all the money on R&D so long as the additional intellectual property continues to turbo-boost QUALCOMM's marketing strengths. So far so good, the odd glitch or three notwithstanding. Where they have gone seriously astray has been in efforts to promote CDMA, by blowing a fortune on Vesper, NetZero and a few other ideas. Originally it made sense to create Leap, the infrastructure division and handset division, because that was a way of forcing CDMA through the barriers to the paying subscribers. Sensibly, they exited those when it became apparent that critical mass in licensees would do the job and they'd have trouble running those profitably. Globalstar was a big mess too - destroyed by mis-pricing the service in the early days. What I would like to see now is return of profits to shareholders. Yes, there are no doubt plenty of good things to do to meld new technologies into cyberphones. But I sense an attitude of "What the heck are we going to do with this dirty great pile of money". That makes me nervous. Politicians can dispose of all the money in the world, to no good effect. Companies can do that too. I'm watching for any tendency like that in QUALCOMM. Now that they don't have to be so penny-pinching, I worry that they'll become profligate and spend carelessly. If they husband the cash well and start paying it out, they will become popular. The growth rate in CDMA sales is still large and there's no end in sight [6 billion is a lot of people]. I'm not keen on funding a Professor Cadogan-styled science fun fair. Investors can donate their money to scientists they want to support that. We want profit. Mqurice