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Technology Stocks : Nextwave Telecom Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dexter Lives On who wrote (999)	4/25/2008 5:42:41 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1088

I suppose NextWave has relatively few patents, owns spectrum and makes ASICs, so it serves their interests to have minimal royalties. If there are 20 or 40 essential patent holders, then each is a roadblock. But there will only be say half a dozen ASIC makers so NextWave would have a greater market share of ASICs and therefore a greater share of the money which goes to buy ASICs than the money which goes to rent patents. Each dollar which goes to rent patents is a dollar extracted from spectrum value. I suppose there is a value above zero for NextWave patents which would maximize their profits. If zero, then anyone could compete. So they want enough of a charge to keep out competitors, but not enough to strangle their ASICs and spectrum value. I have no idea what the optimum royalty rates would be for the various parties to OFDM standards. I suspect it's more economic for somebody to just buy the companies involved and run their own show. As Qualcomm did with Flarion. Look how much cost and hassle would have been saved if Qualcomm had simply bought Nokia when they had the same market capitalisation. Qualcomm could have sold the handsets and other businesses now, at high market caps, after stripping out the patents. Maybe Qualcomm should have bought NextWave at the low market capitalisation of a few days ago. Not that I have any idea at all what NextWave's patents are worth, let alone the rest of the assets. Mqurice