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

To: qveauriche who wrote (129334)	5/27/2003 1:02:09 PM
From: Stock Farmer	Respond to of 152472

Yes, I completely agree with part of what you say. I decline to comment on various parts that I might not agree with. Now, are you any farther ahead? [EDIT: Just kidding, around... but there are some fundamental assumptions here. Firstly, that there are no offsetting agreements of any nature between Nokia and Qualcomm, and secondly that terms of a CDMA license to Nokia (with their GSM patents) are the same as those for Samsung (without ofsetting patents). Third, I am not sure that the terms of the '97 agreement were ever disclosed, so terms being the same as something unknown is the same as being unknown.]

To: qveauriche who wrote (129334)	5/27/2003 1:06:13 PM
From: carranza2	Respond to of 152472

You're a saint--don't know why you bother. There is a group of posters who get great pleasure out of simply harassing Q investors. C'est la vie--I have a lot of them on "ignore" though there are some Q cynics who have honest insights and who do no make it a game to harass for pleasure alone.. Legalities aside, Nokia needed a 3G license for infra--Q wouldn't sell it without an agreement on handsets. Don't forget Spinco being put on the shelf. This is such old, boring ground.

To: qveauriche who wrote (129334)	5/27/2003 1:53:19 PM
From: Stock Farmer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

A serious reply. You are the lawyer. Publicly traded corporations are required to inform their shareholders (and the public) of all material facts related to the business. So while it might be material for them to disclose "we have signed royalty bearing license agreements with everybody on the planet", and it might also be material for them to disclose "generally, the terms of the license are between 3 and 5% of sales", they are not required to say "Joe pays us ten micro-percent while Sam pays us six percent". What they are required to do is use a reasonably defensible definition of "generally". Which could include average, weighted average, mean, median or mode. But usually not all simultaneously. And while it is common practice to use the word "generally" while describing the "average" licensing terms, the standard deviation which such term implies is not "generally" described. Which "generally" leads to opportunities for individuals to draw their own conclusions when it comes to specific instances. Sometimes this "opportunity" is incidental to legitimate privacy. Often however, the scope of such "opportunity" is... um... "not intentionally narrowed", possibly "in the interest of preserving certain confidential business terms". Which practice sometimes leaves... um.. more than minimum opportunity for an individual to be incorrect in whatever misplaced inferences he or she draws. Which may or may not be intentional. So it is not really "misleading" to state that license fees are variable, but are generally within some range which might not capture, for example, a small fraction of the market. Such as, for example, may be 10% or 20% on either extreme. Sometimes maybe it is better to wonder? For example, Nokia has a small fraction of the CDMA market, like maybe 10%. "Generally", if the royalties they pay were, say, half or a quarter of those everyone else pays, then it would not be a material omission by Qualcomm to exclude such a factoid in any general business discussion. Would it? Certainly it would be legitimate business practice to withhold this from other prospective clients of our hypothetically less than totally open discloser. Otherwise they would all want the "better" rate. Not unlike a "Manufacturers Suggested Retail Price" for IP, n'est pas? Not everybody pays sticker price, and very few retailers will disclose actual prices right up there with sticker prices. If there is any room for negotiation at all, that is. Provided that there is a legitimate business reason that is to the advantage of shareholders, companies may, from time to time, withhold information from shareholders. It is a delicate but defensible balance. Is it not? Furthermore, if Nokia and Qualcomm were, for example, to have engaged in hypothetical other arms length agreements, about which both parties are hypothetically silent, and which are hypothetically constructed bilaterally but "coincidentally" practiced unilaterally and which, thus, in practice, result in an offsetting balance of payments... well, that wouldn't necessarily have to come up in discussion, would it? Me, I've been around too many clever weasles who have been advised by too many even more clever lawyers and accountants to trust press releases. Oh, they are technically the truth. Every letter. But they are rarely the "whole truth". Wouldn't you agree?