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

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (11241)	6/7/1998 7:35:00 PM
From: Gregg Powers	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

Whoa Nellie! Since Qualcomm has engineered the terrestrial portion of Globalstar's network, the probably of it not having timely Globalstar handset availability should be darn near zero. QPE's capacity constraints are a function of (a) strong business conditions, (b) last quarter's manufacturing snafus (which led to unmet demand and caused backlog to increase) and (c) the introduction of a new handset (the 800mhz Q), which consumes more capacity than normal unit production because of ramp-up issues. Beyond this, there is nothing preventing Qualcomm from adding additional production capacity. To "marginmike"...please pay closer attention to the responding posts. The Koreans (i.e. Samsung, LG, Maxon, Pantech etc) all BUY ASICs from Qualcomm. None of the Korean companies produce their own chips and, to my knowledge, none are licensed to sell any chips they might produce on a merchant basis. That is, an IS-95 licensee must buy a handset license to make handsets and an ASIC license to make (and sell) ASICs to external customers. Under an IS-95 handset license, a customer can make ASICs for internal consumption (e.g. Motorola and Nokia). As of today there are, to my knowledge, only two merchant vendors of CDMA with production ASICs (other than Qualcomm)..DSP and VLSI. VLSI's chip has just been announced and I don't know of any company that is deploying it yet (although I am certain some must be trialing it). DSP has been making big noises about Japanese business, but I have considerable anecdotal evidence that suggests the chip has not performed up to expectations (and that DSP's much discussed, but not disclosed, Japanese customer has switched to the QC ASIC). QC has never behaved in an exclusionary fashion, so I doubt that there is a preordained limit to the number of ASIC, handset or infrastructure companies that it will license. However, one could reasonably presume that Irwin and Company are clever enough not to establish a royalty rate structure that undermines the economics of QC's own businesses. Furthermore, and this cannot be emphasized enough, QC is on its FIFTH GENERATION SILICON while DSP, VLSI and MOT are still working through FIRST generation production. Qualcomm's headstart from a technology, production and volume standpoint will not be easily overcome by its competitors. Best regards, Gregg