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

To: brian h who wrote (12239)	7/13/1998 2:01:00 PM
From: w molloy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

>> Brian H : A chipset sample is... I can't speak for QCOM, but generally you can consider a sample to be an advanced prototype. The rough edges have been smoothed down, but there may well be subtle problems lurking in the design. 'phone OEM's like to get their hands on representative silicon so they can produce their own 'sample' handsets. Hope this helps w.

To: brian h who wrote (12239)	7/13/1998 8:40:00 PM
From: Asterisk	Respond to of 152472

I read W. Malloys response and agree whole heartedly. I cannot speak for QCOM either (unless they want to hire me as a spokesperson and give me a huge raise) but in general samples are after most of the engineering has been done and a company is ironing out the final kinks. The shape, features and everything else has been finalized and the only thing left is the ramp up of production. Companies like to get the advance parts so that they can get the shapes in CAD, get their engineers spun up on the new features and begin to lay out the first circuit boards. It is not at all uncommon for companies to give out pre samples knowledge also. People like Microsoft leak knowledge of their newest operating systems to preferred customers so that they can get their applications out sooner. In this case it may be that with this chipset it is possible to design a smaller more feature packed phone. In the current economy sometimes getting your product out days before the others can make you an additional couple million and make the difference between a mediocre quarter and a superb quarter. As far as time frames go that is totally dependant on the company and the number of people on a project. If you had 1000 people on a new computer from IBM in the mid 70's it would take them an entirely different amount of time than having 1000 people in a company called Apple. If a company wants to turn out a new product the time frame that it takes is entirely dependant on the company culture, and how much money and talent the company has to throw at it.