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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 (62987)	4/22/2007 10:02:16 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 196856

Oh, sorry I wasn't clear. I meant the top rate being the maximum price for a device on which a royalty will be charged. For example, if a device costs $2000, and the maximum is $1000 wholesale price, then [at the standard rate, which is anything but standard] a $55 royalty would be paid. If a device costs $999, the royalty would still be $55 [near enough]. If a device costs $200, the royalty would be $11. Do you know what the maximum wholesale price is? If it's $1000 or $10,000 let's hope they include CDMA devices in cars and high end notebook computers. If it's $500, that's still not bad because lots of devices are in that range. If it's only $200, then inflation will soon turn that to nothing. I wonder if it's an inflation indexed price. What happens in the contracts if the US$ goes the way of Argentina and is reset to zero? I don't see why this information needs to be secret. You can bet insiders know it and when QUALCOMM decides whether to buy shares back, they are using that information against sellers who don't have it. Maybe that's legal in SEC rules, but it's not in the spirit of open and fair trading. I must say I never got the impression handsets and infrastructures were only intended to seed the markets. I know that was the driving intention and was how Hong Kong got going as the first ever network when Motorola defaulted on supply. Anyway, that's long gone past history, but I was really disappointed when they failed to become actual businesses making mega profits. I understand the economies of scale argument, but Sony-Ericsson seem to have done okay and I had thought Sony-QUALCOMM would do even better. Design and marketing matter more than economies of scale and bills of materials. Contrary to some ideas, handsets are absolutely not commodities and Nokia proves that every day. Handsets are more personal than girl friends and boy friends. The variety is huge. People don't show off their commodities to their friends at lunch. "Oh, did you buy that Texaco Sky Chief gasoline? Good choice! Myrtle is such a cheapie she got Fire Chief." "Really! Omigosh! I'm going to get mine at Discount Joe's coz he gives free Pizza and has this real spunk working there". Mqurice