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

To: Ingenious who wrote (14181)	8/27/1998 2:22:00 AM
From: Clarksterh	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 152472

Leland - One additional thing to note about qcom's CDMA is that it is just one* type of CDMA; namely IS-95 CDMA* The standard that QCOM sells equipment for is indeed IS-95, but that does not mean that their patents are only applicable to IS-95. (Contrary to the complete garbage printed in Forbes Digital) That would be somewhat akin to saying that Intel patents are only good for the x86 line. QCOM patents cover those things that are essential for cell-system/mobile CDMA. There are certain bottlenecks through which any cell-system/mobile CDMA system must go, and creating a bigger fatter standard isn't likely to get around them. For instance fast, accurate power control of the mobile handset is critical. The problem is that there are probably only a few ways to do this effectively and cheaply and Qualcomm probably has all of them already covered. It might be possible for a competitor to wend their way through these bottlenecks with some lesser patents of their own, but it is likely that it will be time consuming, expensive, and technologically inferior if it is possible at all. If Qualcomm had only one botteneck covered like this I'd be at least somewhat worried, but there are several others such as synchronization and soft-handoff (which is subtley related to power control). It just seems non-credible to me that Ericsson et al are going to be able to wend their way through all of these carefully guarded passes in any reasonable amount of time and come up with a system that works worth a darn. Clark PS Although I am not familiar enough with the territory to know exactly how thoroughly Qualcomm has guarded each pass (I have to judge by the amount of time they had the field to themselves), I am knowledgable enough to say that the passes are indeed bottlenecks. There are, with high probability, no ways around these bottlenecks. FWIW