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

To: slacker711 who wrote (77326)	5/26/2008 11:34:48 PM
From: slacker711	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 196652

Samsung Elec. Builds Phone with Infineon Chipset english.chosun.com In a bid to diversify its source of chipsets, a key component of mobile phones, Samsung Electronics has begun importing them from Germany's largest chip maker, Infineon Technologies. Until recently, Samsung had imported all of its third-generation mobile phone chipsets from Qualcomm of the U.S., which owns the core CDMA technology. But in April the Korean company developed its first phone equipped with an Infineon chipset and began exporting it in early May. The move should give Samsung a better position in price negotiations with Qualcomm, and will likely have an enormous effect on negotiations by other Korean mobile phone makers who also source their chipsets from the U.S. supplier. According to Samsung Electronics and local mobile phone industry insiders on Monday, Samsung finished developing a 3G mobile phone model equipped with an Infineon chipset in late April and began exporting it to European nations such as France on May 9. Samsung plans to develop another Infineon-based mobile phone in June also for export to Europe and next year it will install Infineon chipsets in mobile phones destined for North America. A senior Samsung Electronics executive said, "While they're more than 20 percent cheaper, Infineon's chipsets are not inferior to Qualcomm's in quality. We think we can get them at much lower prices in the future, and we can take the initiative in price negotiations with Qualcomm as well." (englishnews@chosun.com )

To: slacker711 who wrote (77326)	5/27/2008 3:01:50 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 196652

Over 400 million subscribers is a lot of people. It's a bit more than an afterthought. Given the 12% W-CDMA royalties, over time, W-CDMA should dwindle if we believe the nonsense given for over a decade about how Qualcomm's royalties at 4% are sufficient to cause significant slowing of sales of the technology. An 8% royalty difference is a huge difference. But nevertheless, W-CDMA continues to grow rapidly, with Telstra giving up on CDMA2000 in favour of W-CDMA, which shows royalties were never a significant issue, which they obviously aren't when the total 2 year cost of ownership of a phone and service are considered. Koreans whined like a fleet of Koreans about about the low CDMA royalties, but are using more and more W-CDMA which again shows that the royalty rate isn't a big deal after all. Mqurice

To: slacker711 who wrote (77326)	5/27/2008 9:44:07 AM
From: Jim Mullens	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 196652

Slacker, re: INTC vs QCOM (MIDs, etc), and >> “....but if a vendor isnt a player in the US, I doubt that all of the overseas CDMA markets will persuade them to absorb the cost of adding DO to a HSPA device. ” What in your estimation is the “added cost” ??? 1) Notebooks- ….With QCOM Gobi solution the notebook mfg appears to gain significant scale by manufacturing one device that supports virtually all markets. Would not this advantage off-set any potential cost difference in the Gobi baseband vs just a GSM+ 3GSM baseband that is supposedly cheaper? I recall Sanjay saying they (& Novatel/ Sierra Wireless) were pricing Gobi very aggressively to “jump start” this opportunity. 2) MID’s – ….In devices / markets where the processing power of QCOM’s Snapdragon is good (powerful) enough, the Snapdragon chip also includes the baseband whereas the Intel solution requires a separate baseband solution. Would not this give the Snapdragon a cost advantage? …..or, at least cost parity …. With the added advantage of power savings of not only the Snapdragon itself but also resulting from power drain from hard wiring the separate baseband to the Atom processor?