Edwin, we shouldn't give too much credit to Vodafone. <Globalstar marketing, when Vodaphone and their CEO sabotaged it. > Globalstar destroyed itself as much as Vodafone helped them along. I had discussion with various Globalstar management and they were NOT amenable to low prices, even in the areas they controlled.
They were inbued with the telecom marketing disease = charge like a wounded bull.
Meanwhile, I'm not "down on QUALCOMM". Anything is just a greater or lesser collage of good things and defects.
QUALCOMM was the best company I have ever seen and I have dealt with literally thousands up close and personal during my oil industry days, from the biggest to the one man bands.
Which isn't to say there weren't things going wrong all along, but accounting crimes and other carnage were not among them.
Having been at the peak, there's nowhere to go but down. As times change, management leaves, the business morphs, circumstances change, employees change, it's bound to rejoin the normal human realm. Which can still be highly profitable.
Nor are the legal problems a big deal compared with what I imagined when I used to rant about the lawsuits coming down the pike, when all and sundry thought I was off my rocker and that QCOM had no problems in that regard. Even without being the biggest company, or even in the top rank, the attacks have been launched.
I have noticed a few things which are unsatisfactory, such as lack of information on the top rate, which is of course a standard rate, so everyone gets the same, right? So it can't be a commercial secret.
Now QUALCOMM asserts that they are NOT using any Nokia claims or any patents. I hope they can back that up in court without looking as though they were adding lying to their use of Nokia patents. Nokia will be interested in showing that QUALCOMM has very dirty, filthy hands, and is using Nokia's patents, doing so deliberately, and lied in public that they were not doing so, with a view to misleading investors and to get away with unlicensed use of said patents, with the view of avoiding triple damages by pretending that they didn't know they were abusing Nokian's property.
So far, given QCOM's recent legal failures, I am not confident that QUALCOMM is quite as pure as the driven snow and as clean as a whistle as it would be nice to believe.
Imagine the triple whammy if triple damages were awarded to Nokia for one breach of one patent by QCOM and that because of QCOM's dirty hands, the licence agreements are void and Nokia has no obligation to pay QCOM because QCOM had dirty hands. Maybe that's not the way the law works, nor juries, nor judges, but I wouldn't bet my life on that.
I have seen the result with Texaco when "big" companies get over-full of their own importance and "little" judges put them on the legal straight and narrow. I have no information on which patents Nokia thinks QCOM is using. But I'm sure they'll be explaining just which ones they are to a judge and jury.
QUALCOMM will have to show that not only are they NOT using any Nokia patents. If they can't show that, they will have to show they didn't know they were, which would be a pretty big ask given the amount of legal crossfire in the patent realm, or reasonably suspect they were. Also, that their denial that they were wasn't just flim flam to escape the consequences of their breach of Nokia's rights.
If they know that they are in breach of some Nokia claim of some patent, it is not a good position.
I don't know how the legal system works, but it would be pretty bad if Nokia as a consequence could use the disputed patents in the agreement, which hasn't expired because terms of it are still running, such as the renewal option, which means the whole thing is still running, but QUALCOMM couldn't. I think I have read such a case somewhere which QUALCOMM was involved with perhaps.
Imagine the legal situation if QCOM was now the $1 trillion behemoth I'd imagined, with handsets, infrastructure, ASICs, software, Leap Wireless International [note the "international"], Globalstar, BREW, Wireless Knowledge, Wingcast, Vesper, Pegaso, Eudora, 724 Solutions, PayPal all bundled and tied into one monstrous package across the mobile cyberspace realm.
Intel does ASICs
Microsoft does operating systems and software
IBM did boxes
Cisco does infrastructure
JDS Uniphase did fibre [the glass interface]
Google does email [Eudora's replacement]
Federal Reserve does money
Vodafone does phone service providing
Imagine QUALCOMM replacing all that in one monster company and making it mobile.
I think our legal problems would have been serious. So would the profits, so would the market capitalisation.
We have whittled those opportunities down to a pale shadow of the possibilities. Now, we are talking about cutting our royalties further to ingratiate ourselves with the slimeball Hagfish Guild.
Mqurice |
