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To: Jim Mullens who wrote (53933)	5/1/2003 1:47:13 PM
From: Mike Buckley	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

Jim, I further believe that the FUD campaign vigorously exerted on Qualcomm and CDMA has been extremely effective. What say you? I don't think any of the cellular industry's FUD campaigns have been particularly effective. If the campaigns were more effective, the end users would have a perception that some cell technologies/operators offer certain benefits that other cell technologies don't offer. To this day, and this is especially a direct criticism of Qualcomm's FUD campaign, the vast, vast majority of the end users don't have a clue that there are different benefits provided by competing technologies; almost every end user thinks all cell phones and all cellular operators have the same capabilities. Therefore, I think most of the industry's FUD campaigns have been more of a PR campaign targeted toward each company's shareholders with the intent of making sure that the companies' managers keep their job and that the shareholders have a so-called understanding of why management's decisions are what they are. As an example of effectiveness, years ago IBM might have conducted the best FUD campaign in the history of technology. It resulted in the belief that no one ever got fired for selecting IBM. In my mind, that's an "extremely effective" FUD campaign as you put it. Perhaps next best is Intel's FUD campaign, otherwise known as "Intel Inside" that implies that a computer doesn't work as well if it's not powered by an Intel microprocessor. If those two campaigns are the standard of effectiveness, I don't think any company or group of companies in the cellular industry has been anywhere near that successful. Of all the FUD campaigns (at least in the USA), Verizon's might be the best because it implies that a customer signing up with a competing operator won't get 100% coverage. But even that doesn't mention that it has anything to do with Verizon's chosen technology. So, it comes off as nothing other than circumspect marketing phoo phoo. (Or is it foo foo? :) I'm open minded, as always. Maybe someone can convince me otherwise. Let's assume for the moment that I'm wrong about the FUD campaigns coming from Qualcomm's competitors. If indeed they are effective, that's more because Qualcomm's FUD campaign has been so ineffective more than because its competitors' campaigns have been effective. So, I blame it on Qualcomm more than casting aspersions on its competitors. --Mike Buckley