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

To: Eric L who wrote (68018)	8/20/2007 12:34:20 PM
From: Art Bechhoefer	Respond to of 197443

Eric, the details you have provided on Nokia's decision to abandon CDMA2000 (EV-DO) development are extremely interesting and, I assume, accurate. If anything, they reinforce the actions taken subsequently by Nokia, but the motive may have been simpler: Nokia, after spending a fair amount of energy developing its own CDMA2000 technology, must have seen that it was quite far behind QCOM. Hence, Nokia saw that QCOM was a formidable competitor and decided that challenging QCOM in this market niche was not cost effective. Looking at these issues in broad perspective, it appears to me that Nokia's actions are similar to those of Kodak in regard to the huge strides made by Polaroid in instant photography. Polaroid had the lion's share of the patents. Kodak wanted a piece of the action and asked Polaroid for a license. When Polaroid refused, Kodak said it would go ahead nevertheless. This arrogance led to a patent infringement lawsuit, won by Polaroid. It turned out that Kodak had no way to make a workable instant camera without infringing at least some of the Polaroid patents. Now comes Nokia, looking for an inexpensive GSM-WCDMA chip that will beat the competition. What better way to get it (outside of doing your own R&D) than to intimidate the competitors by filing legal actions, tieing up everyone, including service providers, all for the purpose of delaying the inevitable and finding some way, ANY WAY of getting something for nothing? Art

To: Eric L who wrote (68018)	8/20/2007 1:07:36 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 197443

Betting that Andrew Viterbi didn't know what he was talking about wasn't too bright: <Nokia and the TI/STMicro CDMA JV focused 100% of their IC development efforts on the 3GPP2 cdma2000 path and none whatsoever on the IS-856 (1xEV-DO) path. > He said that HDR aka EV-DO was the way to go. He also said OFDM was the way to go and he went, to Flarion, which I had to buy a few years later for an extorquerationate sum. QUALCOMM should have put a lot of effort into OFDM then, when he was presumably gung ho to get it going but perhaps somebody stymied him financially, [yes Mr S----zio you know who you are], [there wasn't money to burn in those days and capital was still being raised]. In the late 1990s we [at an AGM] asked him after the event about the prospects for OFDM which I had found being fiddled around with at Auckland University and it seemed like an evil-doing strategic competitor. He was off-hand and non-commital. It was like seeing politicians say in regard to sub-prime 100% mortgages in the midst of financial gyrations: "Everything's fine. Nothing to see here. We have nothing to fear but fear itself. Stay calm and everything will be alright". Any sensible person seeing such 'official' proclamations knows what steps to take; big long ones, heading for the hills. He certainly did NOT say. "Oh we are right on top of OFDM. In fact we are using it as our next generation replacement of CDMA and we are way ahead of everyone else on it, with locking fundamental patents and several experimental ASICs already running". OFDM continues to loom as a threat, but it's now more likely to be integrated ab initio [nice word Limtex] into QCOM multimode technology rather than arrive announced from Nokia, battering down the fabled walls of Mighty Q [which is looking less than Mighty lately]. However, as we speak, I am selling OFDM in the form of WiFi [via zenbu.net.nz ], so QCOM has a war on its hands with OFDM. People are using Wi-Fi instead of EV-DO from Telecom. In the not so long run, there should be a segue to OFDM as the primary carrier. QCOM is well positioned [Broadcom and Nokia notwithstanding, with their plops]. Mqurice I am guessing at who stopped the investment in OFDM.