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

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (129937)	6/26/2003 8:20:09 PM
From: Art Bechhoefer	Respond to of 152472

Maurice, you are right that the word monopoly should not apply here. Better, perhaps, would be the word dominate, but not to the exclusion of other competitors. I'm thinking more in the sense that Warren Buffett chooses companies that have a large market share. He likes newspapers such as the Washington Post, which dominates its trade area, but not to the exclusion of other papers. He doesn't like newspapers in cities where two or more papers are major competitors (because the profit margins are lower). He would most certainly like the OmniTRACS business. It does not take a monopoly to motivate a government to confiscate. A government can do that just by common ordinary favoring of its friends and cronies, within or outside the private sector. A government can also favor its friends by taking no action against them when the laws ought to be enforced. Regulation is a two way street. I happen to think it is abused more by the failure to enforce, or enforce with an even hand. I doubt we will ever see QUALCOMM dominating its sector in the way that Microsoft dominates PC software and systems because the present management of QUALCOMM has a different view of corporate governance. And the government is not likely to cave into a company like QUALCOMM in a manner similar to its behavior with respect to Microsoft. Art