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Technology Stocks : Qualcomm Incorporated (QCOM) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (11225)	6/7/1998 9:45:00 AM
From: Gregg Powers	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

Maurice: My "jumpiness" does not, as you might think, derive from unsettled investors, but rather reflects frustration arising from the continued onslaught of misinformation and misunderstanding. For example, although some issues in the 3G debate are really pretty straightforward and obvious, I can attest to the fact that confusion reigns (particularly given the number of private emails that I received over my Star Trek metaphor). For the record, the point of my little story was that despite all the hype, positioning and marketing smoke-and-mirrors, Ericsson is not, and cannot, unilaterally dictate the 3G standard because it requires Qualcomm's IPR. That fact is being demonstrated empirically BY ALL THE SOUND AND FURY COMING FROM THE DEBATE. All the noise must be a chimera else QC would have been excluded from the debate already. This is actually pretty obvious, but it requires conviction and intuition to see the forest for the trees. With regard to the scarce PCS 'Q' phones, I know that GTE's PCS operation picked up the 'Q' line and that Qualcomm was shipping units to them from inventory. I suspect that QPE's manufacturing operation is capacity constrained given demand for the QCP family and the ramp of 800mhz, dual mode 'Q's. The demand for the latter seems to be quite extraordinary and I know the company is committing substantial resources to its timely introduction and volume production. It should not be surprising (or alarming) that some carriers are not selling Qualcomm handsets. Not considering the capacity lost to new product launches, QPE's current production limit is around 1.5mm handsets per quarter. I think all of us expect net CDMA subscriber additions for 1998 to be far in excess of 6mm (with gross adds, considering subscriber churn, to be 10%-15% higher still). Consequently, QC could not possibly meet all the demand, nor would this be desirable since it would potentially impair the economics for other CDMA handset vendors (who buy QC ASICs and pay nice royalties). Finally, one should remember that depending on the model (QCP or 'Q'), Qualcomm might actually make more money when Samsung (or another chip-buying, royalty-paying licensee) sells a phone than when it does the same. Best Regards, Gregg

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (11225)	6/7/1998 10:25:00 AM
From: Jon Koplik	Respond to of 152472

Maurice - regarding exactly how many wireless carriers are presently operating here in Naples, you know -- I was sort of wondering the same thing, and finally gave up trying to keep count, because there seem to be so many sneaky, little entities that take out the occasional ad in the newspaper but do not make clear exactly what type of technology they are using, where exactly their "footprint" in Southwest Florida begins and ends, etc. There are at least two in addition to the CDMA-based carriers. Maybe Gregg knows the correct answer. Jon.

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (11225)	6/7/1998 10:39:00 AM
From: Jon Koplik	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

I am not sure how to do the "to Jon, from Jon" posting, (which is probably the correct designation for this post), so I'll say this is for Maurice. In case anyone is interested, I learned from somewhere (I cannot remember where) that California has a website where one can check all existing "vanity" license plates to see if one that you want is already taken ! It immediately occurred to me to start checking for plates that had an obvious connection to Qualcomm (GO CDMA (?)). Last time I checked (quite a few months ago), I was surprised how few there were (at least amongst the permutations I came up with). It is possible that it is only after a company reaches the obnoxious stage (like, I have read, Oracle Systems did, for a while) that there would be a huge proliferation of vanity plates. (I personally have thought about getting a Florida plate with some silly Qualcomm related message, but would probably not actually do it until Qualcomm's share price is sharply higher). Thus, if anyone wants to follow this California list, maybe it will be an early warning sign someday that the exponential rise in QCOM is about to plateau. The URL is plates.ca.gov Jon.

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (11225)	6/7/1998 11:56:00 AM
From: Ramsey Su	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 152472

Maurice or anyone, catching up on the events of the past two weeks, it appears to be nothing but good news for QCOM. Omnitracs in China is a big deal. Unlike the US, China has highjacking problems which Omnitracs could help deter. Australia is similar to Mexico in terms of future potential. This congressional stuff cannot be negative to QCOM. Spinning off parts of QCOM sounds very logical to me. Now why did the stock go down? Did I miss some negative news? Ramsey

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (11225)	6/7/1998 2:30:00 PM
From: Jon Koplik	Respond to of 152472

Free (limited) real-time stock quotes are now available (as of just a few days ago) if one is a (paying) subscriber to the Wall Street Jounal's Internet version. They limit you to 50 quotes per day, and make it slightly cumbersome to use (only one quote at a time (no "portfolios"), the technique for "refreshing" a quote is NOT just a single click on Netscape Navigator's "reload" thing, etc.). But, I don't blame them from avoiding treading too closely to the quote services that still extract money from people for "user-friendly" real-time quotes. I personally am in the lucky position of not really caring about any real-time stock quote other than QCOM, so this works real well for me. Jon.