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

To: Gregg Powers who wrote (18366)	11/17/1998 2:06:00 AM
From: tero kuittinen	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 152472

I don't get this focus on Frezza. I'm not zooming on the totally erraneous predictions about CDMA's performance and prospects in Asia and Europe that were rampant on this thread in 1996. Why this monthly exhumation of poor Frezza? Nobody who may have listened to him or me in 1996 and bought Nokia is regretting their decision. Can you say the same for people you may have influenced to buy Qualcomm at 80 dollars back then? Rumors on Qualcomm's new q-phone are hardly my fabrications. Why don't you visit Deja News once a month and use prompts like "Qualcomm", "quality" and "q-phone"? The buzz is bad. None of the posts are mine! As usual, you are dismissing the handset problems as illusory while both sales growth numbers and disillusioned US customers underline the issue. If this company has been selling phones at full capacity all year long in a market that is expanding at 380% - how on earth can Qualcon's 3Q sales growth be below Nokia's? I think the operator discussion was actually illuminating. Let's take Michael's math seriously and assume that the number of CDMA subscribers went up by 380% during 3Q 1998. This would mean that Qualcomm's sales growth was one seventh of the current subscriber growth in USA. Are you really happy with the way Qualcomm is translating CDMA's growth into sales growth? According to Jeff's numbers CDMA's growth rate will be down to well below 100% in two years. One seventh of that is about 12%. Qualcomm's stock price was built on the assumption that CDMA rolls over other digital standards and Qualcomm benefits from this. The company was so aggressive in selling this scenario that it set up inflated expectations. This is one reason for Nokia's current updrift - US investors were so impressed by CDMA that they are only now catching up to the fact that a big GSM company is actually growing faster than the ten times smaller "creator of CDMA". The formidable spin machines of Motorola and CDMA cabal are the main reason why Nokia keeps surprising every Wall Street sales and profit estimate. The hyped up expectations now placed on CDMA, Startac sales and the new V series are impossible to top. Meanwhile, Nokia's consensus growth estimate for the next five years is 23% (!). This is a direct result of a CDMA propaganda assault. Beating that number will not be too tough. We are in the midst of the hottest year of CDMA growth in USA. But unexpectedly, other digital standards are not rolling over. ATT put in over 70% subscriber growth even though it had a massive analog subscriber base just like most CDMA companies - it's demolishing the Baby Bells and taking on Sprint. GSM is topping estimates and iDEN is adding 300 000 new customers per quarter. The upshot - no domination for CDMA, heated price competition, low profit margins for low volume manufacturers. Dave asked me which company is most likely to double it sales soonest. Looking at the last quarter I must say it's Nokia. It may be big, dull and boring when compared to Qualcomm. But it is squeezing every drop out of GSM and TDMA growth. This is the question: is it better to bet on a company that manages 50% growth perfectly - or a company that has a shot at 100% growth but a hit & miss record? Tero