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

To: Gregg Powers who wrote (20501)	12/29/1998 11:53:00 AM
From: tero kuittinen	Read Replies (8) \| Respond to of 152472

I'm not sure that GSM's "obsolete air interface" is a huge problem when GSM phones are superior to CDMA phones in so many respects. The problems CDMA seems to have in implementing data solutions are simply inexcusable. It's almost 1999 and you still can't send e-mail or even short messages from CDMA phones! It's outrageous. You know perfectly well that Qualcomm's new Q-phone is creating plenty of negative buzz - consumers are complaining thet they get only six hours of stand-by time if they use the phone for five minutes! SIM-card is a clear advantage for GSM phones - you can keep your number when you switch phones or even take the card with you when you travel and use it in GSM-900 phones in Europe or Asia. The worldphones that implement both GSM-800 and GSM-900 are enabling people to use their phones in all the continents of the world. Nokia's tri-mode TDMA phones are a huge hit, while no CDMA tri-mode phones that would be of even adequate quality are on the market. I'm not an engineer, so I don't know whether GSM really has an "obsolete air interface". But I have the eyes to see what standard is looking obsolete to ordinary consumers at this moment. The most recent market research data from USA backs my observations. It is the Qcom enthusiasts who have to make justifications like "the independent market share research is false". We will see whether Nokia and Ericsson "tweaked" IS-95 (which didn't even exist when these companies started their W-CDMA R&D effort) or created a new standard that may incorporate some elements that Qcom can claim to have IPR for. Like I said, I'm not an engineer. But I know engineers who think that QCOM's case is shaky. Even if Ericsson's soft hand-off patent originated from TDMA research, I don't think anyone on this thread is really qualified to judge whether it can be extended to CDMA or not. Losing a couple of patent disputes will not sink either Ericsson or Nokia; they have other, massive revenue sources. I'm not sure about Qualcomm. Tero