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Technology Stocks : Qualcomm Moderated Thread - please read rules before posting -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rich Bloem who wrote (59695)	2/3/2007 3:25:34 PM
From: JGoren	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 197254

One major characteristic of successful organizations is that it knows what its mission is and stays away from trying to do things outside that mission. Manufacturing handsets was not Qcom's mission. Manufacturing large quantities of a product such as handsets takes a different set of core values than developing IPR, software, and hard research * developement. Qcom only got into the handset business, and to some extent the infra business, because no one else believed in cdma and it had to guarantee to the carriers that the equipment would be available for the launch. Nobody got defrauded; nobody got screwed. I remember a lot of comment on SI at the time that the handset business was a money pit and losing money. At the time, the shareholders were glad to get rid of product manufacture so Qcom could concentrate on what it does best, R&D and chips. I think you just forgot what was going on at the time and are engaging in a 20-20 hindsight. I doubt that Qcom could have ever competed effectively in the long term in the handset business. Nevertheless, the business model does have its problems. Qcom's business is still dependent on competitors, which is why its relationships are so touchy and often antagonistic. If Qcom made handsets and infra, it would have something to sell retail and particularly to the carriers. Now, on the other hand, Qcom's true customers--albeit somewhat indirectly--are the carriers and its relationships with them are generally good; the carriers drive the handset and infra manufacturers.

To: Rich Bloem who wrote (59695)	2/4/2007 4:12:00 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 197254

Thanks for the fly on the wall details Rich. I'm not in the business of believing false things as it's bad for my financial health, so it's good to get to the bottom of why things happen, and happened, and didn't happen, and might not happen. There are plenty of known unknowns, not to mention unknown unknowns. Known knowns seem to be in short supply. Isn't the difficulty mostly in producing the ASICs rather than the phones? <Very few on this board realize how much more difficult CDMA is than TDMA and GSM. > I thought QCOM's aim is to produce backward-compatible, pin-compatible, plug and play ASICs [give or take a bit]. I wonder why the infrastructure division employees were so put out if they were only meant to be starter motor employees, to be turned off or sold down the river once things were up and running. In the reality-based world, trying to make it all make sense, and fit with facts I know to be true. Mqurice