To: JGoren who wrote (59698 ) 2/3/2007 6:20:00 PM From: Rich Bloem Read Replies (1) | Respond to John, I assume you meant your post to be a reply to Maurice, not me. At any rate, I agree entirely with what you say.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.
