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

To: AlfaNut who wrote (146897)	12/8/2006 6:45:42 PM
From: waitwatchwander	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

New business model, eh ... Mock noted that licencing was new territory for the SD engineers. They were obviously innovative in chip design, wireless systems and business modeling. The next question is ... Did they get the licencing right? docs.law.gwu.edu

To: AlfaNut who wrote (146897)	12/9/2006 3:27:29 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

I wouldn't say QCOM was so brilliant with their "strategy". They arrived at the strategy by failure. Originally, they built infrastructure [in cahoots with Nortel] and phones [in cahoots with Sony] and ASICs [as a fabless designer], plus the software to drive it all and software to deliver services [Eudora]. Then they created Leap Wireless [and Globalstar] as service providers. Not to mention Pegaso and Vesper - arggghhhh...... As well as that, there was the "strategic" investment in a swarm of things such as Graviton, WirelessKnowledge, Wingcast, 724 Solutions, NetZero, Packet Video, etc etc. At one time QCOM had potential to be bigger than Microsoft, IBM and Intel combined, as well as being a service provider and infrastructure supplier. QCOM market capitalisation should now be about $1 trillion. QCOM was supplying the ASICs like Intel, the software, like MSFT, and the box like IBM. NextWave shouldn't have gone into bankruptcy and could have been eyeballing Vodafone. National spectrum is needed - not a few areas like Leap Wireless. The USA did dopey spectrum selling [C-block for brown people, women, and small businesses was insane]. But disaster was everywhere. Meanwhile, they licensed the evil-doing hagfish slimeball GSM Guild to use W-CDMA instead of insisting on CDMA2000 or nothing. It's not that W-CDMA does anything better than does CDMA2000. It was just a monstrous scam. A bit of software and a box could have created an interface with the GSM legacy muck that service providers wanted to keep. But they should have just gone with low frequency CDMA instead of 2GHz and $100 bn in spectrum buying madness. Paul failed to make the handsets division work. My QCP820 for God'- sake didn't even have good connectors. Sure, they pleaded "economies of scale" but plenty of companies succeed by being really good at what they do despite lack of economies of scale. I see economies of scale as a fig-leaf for failure. Across the businesses, there was a litany of loss. Globalstar was absurdly over-priced so subscribers didn't buy. I don't know why the infrastructure division imploded, but it wasn't because the markets and technology were wrong - there was plenty of success by competitors. Nortel theoretically knew what they were doing. Sony is working well with Ericsson - in a very big way. Eudora and the software never evolved to be MSFT/Google as I hoped it would, working on QCOM mobile operating systems. Now I used Gmail instead of EudoraMail. BREW isn't the mechanism for the world's financial and communication system [kids play games on it or something though it's increasing and might yet be a winner]. SnapTrack doesn't seem to be turning in $1bn a year profits; that little effort cost $1billion. Cinecom showed me a movie in Los Angeles and that's all I saw of it. Globalstar in bankruptcy was sold for $60 million or so and now has a market capitalisation of $1bn [with only $150 million or so injected]. Why the heck didn't QCOM buy it all for $70 million, cut the minute price to zero, invent new phones, launch a new constellation and make it worth $10bn? Instead we have cash in the bank and buy shares from people ditching them. I think "We sell ASICs and license our patents" was not so much a strategy as a default setting following widespread failure. I consider the royalties VERY cheap. $100 bn in European 2GHz spectrum bids shows how cheap. Meanwhile, China is planning to steal QCOM technology for TD-SCDMA and the Euroserfs planning to steal QCOM technology for 3GSM [or at least order a FRANDly royalty instead of the "excessive" level of a third of that charged by GSM. OmniTRACS underpinned the business while CDMA developed and succeeded. Thank goodness for Allen Salmasi and OmniTRACs. Mqurice