Sure enough, Lou Dobbs on CNN Moneyline touted Microsoft, then Qualcomm, as movers in the market. It's quite nice to have Q.com mentioned almost in the same breath, especially since Qualcomm's move was spectacular and represents a fundamental revaluation whereas Microsoft's was a mere continued upward pressure on evolutionary products.
Ramsey, the car crash wasn't as good as winning, but any publicity is good - at least Qualcomm was in the race. Simple recognition of the name is important. Castrol sponsored vehicles frequently crash, but I can tell you their brand is tops. It's not as though Qualcomm sells tires and they got a flat!
Gregg, thanks for the view forwards. Won't Q spend a lot on new handset production lines, hire more developers for cdma2000 devices, form a lot more partnerships with the likes of 3Com, Unwired Planet and generally use up the profits? So earnings per share will be low in 1999. I hope so. There is too much to do to be pocketing the profits. For a start, they have to bid on frequency in New Zealand - 600MHz for sale, so it should be cheap, then build a network, though that will probably be SpinCo.
Meanwhile, Bellsouth's NZ GSM network seems likely to be sold to a Texan company, leaving Clear and Telstra with no networks of their own. Saturn will also want one. So there will be lots of competitors for licences, but there is so much spectrum for sale that prices might be low. Auction later in the year - delayed while they figure out cdma2000 specifications and bandwidth needs and sort out some administration, legalese etc.
NextWave $20m was bad news. Mismanagement by Congress [ridiculous rules on who could bid] and the FCC [money should have been paid before the auction] cost the country a fortune and delayed provision of increased competition for consumers for years. Out of $4.3bn bid, I suppose a $20m loss is okay as being in the bidding was essential. The FCC muckups were unpredictable and when the value of the spectrum halved, there was no point in going ahead and funding the bid prices. Best to take the losses and wait for new management of spectrum. It will be funny if new bids are at the same level as previous.
Total cumulative sales of 20m mobile station modem chips [MSM]s is a lot. Those are handset silicon chips for new readers. Nokia is the only other chip maker I think, so these will translate into subscribers sooner rather than later. Surely those 20m will be in use by December and another 10m will have been sold by then, so over 20m handsets will be in operation. Japan, USA, Korea will be using a lot as growth rates accelerate and analog conversions take off.
It is all looking good! Thanks again for the forward looking statements. Do they have 'double your money back' gurantee?
Mqurice
***off topic*** Meanwhile, mice cloned now and progress to humans seems easy enough. Many people think that would be bad. Sort of scary, playing God, meddling with magic and generally interfering with nature. With mutants expected. Multiple Hitlers destroying the earth and a loss of identity.
Meanwhile, Alan Shephard, first USA person in space, died yesterday of leukaemia. Aged 74. He played golf on the moon. Some people would question the sense of sending a man to the moon to play golf, but that's another question.
Leukaemia [English speling] can be treated in part by stem cell or marrow transplants. Tissue compatibility is the big problem, with donors often being unavailable. Many medical problems depend on donors with blood donors being the most common. An acquaintance's daughter has been told she will die in the next 2 or few weeks from leukaemia having been diagnosed June 97, failed chemotherapy with no marrow donor available. She is 23.
Her father is not in a fit mental state, as the parents among you might imagine.
California has made it illegal to clone humans. According to a medical ethics doctor interviewed today on CNN I think it was. Who voted for that? I guess nearly all Californians have an accent. They are foreigners, so it isn't surprising.
Suppose that her father had agreed that their daughter be cloned from the mother, or maybe a cousin, or the grandmother rather than being produced the old fashioned, pot-luck, Russian Roulette way. Being a far sighted guy and realizing that having somebody the same genetically could be handy. His daughter could now be enjoying a brand new blood supply, with zero compatibility problems and real prospects of survival.
People don't seem too upset that there are identical twins. They are clones. So the objection seems to be the old idea that new-fangled things are bad and we should live the Amish way. Though they are quite advanced, with wheels and all that.
Suppose the mother of this leukaemic young woman cloned her a year ago and now had an identical baby. The blood from the umbilical cord would probably be enough. She could have both daughters live.
California has made it a law that these children shall not live. Their mother must bury her daughter. Or be jailed. Or some such insanity.
Go figure! To coin a phrase.
I would help her break the law.
Doesn't the USA Constitution say something about people having a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? The two young women will be denied all three. The mother will be denied the last two.
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scary - how about the first passenger aircraft.
playing God - how about nearly everything we do, brain surgery, choosing a spouse etc.
interfering with nature - how about cdmaOne, cars, everything.
loss of identity - maybe a more solid identity, like a close knit family, tribe or identical twins who all seem happy enough
mutants expected - probably less chance than the normal muddling of haphazard and often defective genes human mating involves
multiple Hitlers - well, personality is not solely a function of dna and maybe multiple Einsteins, Michael Jordans or plain me and you wouldn't really be all that bad. |
