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

To: GO*QCOM who wrote (20613)	12/31/1998 9:17:00 AM
From: tero kuittinen	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 152472

Happy New Year, everyone! Go ahead and kick me, George... when the Chinese government standard decisions and European Patent Office opinions on certain CDMA patents become widely covered in US press, you're going to need all the stress relief methods you can muster. As most of you know, my opinion on CDMA patents has all along been that the picture is murky and anything can happen. Gregg and co. are on the record saying that there is no way Ericsson can win. It's probably a relief to everyone involved that we may be near a situation where this dispute is resolved. The most likely outcome seems to be a draw - either CDMA patents are so bitterly contested that TDMA will be the heart of the new 3G standard or Qualcomm will be forced to accept low licensing fees / a chiprate they do not accept. This company has a lot of promise on some fronts and it will probably become a good buying opportunity if they lose the 3G fight. They have invested so much of their credibility on having all the negotiating power in their hands that any lost patent disputes will probably have immediate repercussions. As usual, too much energy was wasted on 3G and too little on things that really matter. Such as quality of products already on the market and future prospects of manufacturing. I think that the past record of Qualcomm management is indisputable - weak marketing, quality problems, disastrous pricing (remeber that 500$ Q-phone?), painfully slow technological development. I think that the rate of improvements in Qualcomm handsets has lagged the industry by a considerable margin. Dataquest says that Qualcomm's marketshare is in freefall. In 6-9 months we'll see who is right and who is wrong. Maybe it's better to stop this debate until next summer. There was a consensus on this thread that 1998 would be a make or break time for Qualcomm as a handset manufacturer. I still believe that was true - most other people seem to have moved the goalposts and are now saying that 1999 is the crucial year, after all. Perhaps they are right. If CDMA is finally starting to implement data into phones as someone wrote on this thread, if the technical specs come closer to GSM quality, the competition can still tighten. It seems likely to me that if Qualcomm was not able to make use of the considerable advantage it had over other handset companies in 1997-1998 it is unlikely that they can compete now that the first serious CDMA phone compeition is arriving. So I'll once more make firm predictions that can be reviewed next summer/autumn. Motorola's CDMA Startac will grab most of the upmarket CDMA phone buyers. Q-phone will face relatively slow sales as it is crushed between expensive Startacs and moderately priced Nokia 61xx CDMA models next spring. The older Qualcomm models will have the least competitive performance/weight ratios around. As a result, Qualcomm's market share in USA will slide below 5% by next autumn. Sony and Samsung can't build the kind of brands that would allow them to break thorugh the 10% share barrier. The growth of GSM and TDMA subscribers will remain far stronger than was anticipated. The new Motorola V series in the spring and Nokia 88xx series in the summer are the year's hottest luxury phones. They are launched initially in GSM and TDMA formats, driving upscale consumers into these standards. CDMA can't offer the handset quality and variety that creates the same kind of buzz and interest. pdQ will reach a certain following, but being underpowered, expensive and a bit clunky, will not get beyond a niche hit status. Ericsson's new models arrive during summer. They are badly late, but pretty sensational. Together with V series and 88xx they will be the most talked-about models of the summer. In the autumn, the first Bluetooth and Symbian models will start revolutionizing the handset market. Debuting in GSM and TDMA. After 3Q results, Nokia will have performed better than Qualcomm in the 9-month period. Critics and other assorted kickers - put your money where your mouth is and challenge these assumptions. Commit yourself. Tell me how CDMA will succeed in China during 1999, George. Come on... I want to hear your vision. Then we'll discuss the concept of "credibility" next autumn. Tero

To: GO*QCOM who wrote (20613)	12/31/1998 9:17:00 AM
From: Gregg Powers	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 152472

The Motorola Patent Issue Qualcomm has never claimed to be the "inventor of CDMA", this comment from Ericsson is just more PR baloney. Qualcomm claims to have perfected commercially viable mobile CDMA. Within this context, the company's IPR extends from the basic CDMA waveform through the much discussed elements of rake receivers, power control and soft-handoff; in excess of seven hundred US patents, issued or pending, corroborate this claim. The Qualcomm patent that Motorola has been contesting broadly describes a non-terrestrial, i.e. satellite based, application of CDMA. It is a very early and very general patent which I believe Motorola is concerned with due to its announced intention to eventually migrate Iridium from TDMA to CDMA. Qualcomm's litigation counsel noted to me that while the company never likes to see a patent revoked (a) the process is not over as Qualcomm can and will appeal the decision, which in Europe, begins the evaluation process anew and (b) the patent is basically irrelevant to the W-CDMA debate. To put this in context, recall that back in 1986, when this patent was filed, Omnitrac's, which is a satellite-based two-way messaging and position service, was Qualcomm's primary business endeavor. While Ericsson is trying to use this revocation to its PR advantage, rest assured that we would have seen something far more formal and much more damning than snide comments in Wireless Week were this patent truly germane to the debate. Hope this helps! Gregg

To: GO*QCOM who wrote (20613)	12/31/1998 11:26:00 AM
From: Clarksterh	Respond to of 152472

Patent loss for Qualcomm: As I've said before, the particular patent which they lost in this case was pretty broad/unspecific and hence unlikely to survive. However, it has little to do with the IS-95 (it's about the over-all architecture of a satellite CDMA system), so I wouldn't worry too much about it. The Qualcomm patents for key pieces of mobile cell system CDMA are much much more specific and in fact the patent on power control is a superbly written patent. As for the quote from Ericsson, it just shows their PR ability again. Ericsson really believes in the straw dog ('mis-state your opponents position and then tear it down'.). Since when did Qualcomm ever claim to have invented CDMA? Clark