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

To: Gregg Powers who wrote (21386)	1/15/1999 6:03:00 PM
From: limtex	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

Dear Gregg and all - If these ahve been posted before pls ignore:- China To Research And Develop WCDMA With Ericsson Swedish communications provider Ericsson will cooperate with the Ministry of Information Industry of the People's Republic of China on the development of WCDMA mobile telecommunications technologies. [Newsbytes, 171 words] BRITISH TELECOM SETS 3G TRIALS WITH NORTEL, PANASONIC British Telecommunications plc [BTY] has begun work with Northern Telecom Ltd. [NT] and Japan's Panasonic and NEC Corp. [NIPNY] in technical trials of prototype equipment - including pocket-sized terminals - designed for third-generation wireless communications, the companies announced [WIRELESS TODAY, 248 words] Regards, L

To: Gregg Powers who wrote (21386)	1/15/1999 10:33:00 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 152472

Gregg, "Why would someone who claims to doubt the outlook of virtually every element of Qualcomm's business simultaneously model to the Street's highest earnings estimate? " How about so he can be right? He can say, "See, I know what's going on, and sure, they fluked some profit, but they are still competing in a field where they'll be destroyed [handset manufacture], they are unable to turn infrastructure to profit and competition is mounting, Globalstar is on the ropes and might be a year from now before we find out if it even works, Eudora is defunct with Explorer, Netscape and other email taking the market, Wireless Business Solutions is suffering further competitive inroads, VLSI, Nokia, Motorola and others will develop ASICS to compete and probably better ones at that because of their huge resources and vast experience, WCDMA is being accepted by service providers from NTT to American GSM networks and of course in Europe and China with L M Ericsson about to show in court with a flip of a coin that QUALCOMM patents are full of holes, some of them having already been revoked. Patents start expiring in a few years, costs are ballooning, competition is mounting, prices are falling, economies of scale such as Nokias, Ericssons and Motorolas are essential. Messes and failures such as NextWave, slow starts such as Leap, with little market or financial leverage are doomed to failure. Close relations with Leap and others won't generate profitable infrastructure sales. Management is getting older and will retire in a few years. They have been late to market, they have had connector problems, plastic problems, single mode marketing failure for Q phones, belt holder problems, Korean dependency and might fail to gain ground in China, the biggest potential market where GSM is roaring ahead. There are political problems for USA companies in Russia, China, maybe Japan soon, Iraq and elsewhere. QUALCOMM is a single mode company dependent on a single product [cdmaOne] so any break in the chain can cause disaster. While those small problems could be difficult, the more important problems such as ........" Then if Q! fails to reach his 70 cents [my 70 cents too!] he can say, "See, they aren't even doing as well as I thought they would and things have barely started to go wrong for them. Heck, TDMA and GSM have grown hugely, their market share in their home base is down to 8% = half that of a year ago according to Dataquest and cdmaOne sales are sluggish. CdmaOne looks as though it could simply fizzle out altogether as the brilliant marketing, design, snakes and ladders games and standby times in Nokia handsets sweep the market." Stuff like that. I really can't see how 59, 63 or 70 cents can be predicted because such tiny transactions jump that bottom line around so much. One royalty cheque coming in a couple of days late or early could jump that figure all over the place. Revenue is easier to predict and matters more. If revenue is soaring and costs are looking stable = that's good! Mquarkce

To: Gregg Powers who wrote (21386)	1/16/1999 12:07:00 AM
From: Jon Koplik	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

O.T. - "the great" CS First Boston (Marc Cabi's employer). For those of you who do not follow a lot of press regarding Wall Street, I'd just like to "dredge up" some history. Many observers said that First Boston (as it was then called) would almost certainly have gone bankrupt around 1989 or 1990 or so if they had not had a HUGE capital infusion from Credit Suisse (CS). The thing that almost brought them down was (if I am remembering correctly) the bridge loan to Ohio Mattress and/or some bridge loan or other dangerous deal with Sealy (as in Sealy "Posturepedic"). One (or both) of these deals were cleverly called "Burning Bed" by some people. (If anyone wants to correct details of this, please do ...) Jon.

To: Gregg Powers who wrote (21386)	1/16/1999 8:38:00 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 152472

Gregg, Infrastructure losses! Way back about early September you said that infrastructure was turning the corner into breakeven. What went wrong? We are far from breakeven by the look of it. I hereby cancel my 70 cent profit prediction. And shrivel my revenue prediction. $80 on hold too. We can't keep pumping $100m chunks over the fence from royalties, handsets and ASICs without dinging the bottom line a grotesque amount. On the Brazilian auction action, for fixed telephone and value added services in the northeast of Brazil. The 60 million Reals [approximately Cdn$62 million] was bid for a 20 year renewable term with payment over two years. Bell owns 34.4% WLL International Inc 34.4 Qualcomm 16.2 Liberman Group of Argentina 12.5 percent and Vicunha Group of Brazil 2.5 percent. The Northeast region is 16 states with 90 million people, over half of Brazil's population. Major metropolitan areas covered by the license include Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte and Salvador. The consortium plans to service the area primarily using fixed wireless technologies and expects to invest more than Cdn$1.5 billion in building its state-of-the art network. Bell will be the operator. But 20 years is a LONG time to have the spectrum. I wonder if they'll be allowed to swing into mobile in a few years in that frequency. US$50m for 90m people with low incomes sounds a lot. That would be like $2m for New Zealand which seems way too much to me. Considering they'll only attract a small share of that 90m as customers. Say we get 10m customers, that's $10 per customer per year just to cover the spectrum cost [reducing spectrum to zero value over a 5 year period and expecting a decent return on investment]. I guess more like 2m are likely in the first 5 years, so we need more like $50 per person per year for spectrum. That is far from Gilder's vision of free spectrum. Mquarkce

To: Gregg Powers who wrote (21386)	1/18/1999 1:35:00 PM
From: The Prophet	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

Gregg: What are your thoughts on this? It seems as though QCOM is looking to become a pure IPR company, plus ASICs and OMNItracs. rcrnews.com January 18, 1999 Qualcomm could sell handset business By Lynnette Luna Qualcomm Inc. may be ready to sell off its handset division as competition in the cdmaOne handset business intensifies and costs increase. Sources say Qualcomm is in discussions with Siemens Wireless Terminals concerning the sale of Qualcomm's cdmaOne handset division. Qualcomm and Siemens declined to comment. Qualcomm initially entered into the Code Division Multiple Access handset and infrastructure business to promote the technology. Qualcomm was successful in developing and securing a number of patents to cdmaOne technology for use in mobile systems and pushing its acceptance into the market, but other vendors that signed royalty-bearing agreements with Qualcomm were behind in the technology's development. Qualcomm had the expertise and the chipsets to enter the handset market first, and through its partnership with Sony Corp., was the sole provider of cdmaOne handsets for more than a year. Today, the cdmaOne handset market is becoming crowded as major vendors like Nokia Mobile Phones and Motorola Inc. are beginning to sell volumes of cdmaOne handsets. In addition, Asian vendors are flooding into the market and driving prices down. Analysts say the digital handset business is becoming more scale-driven, requiring shorter product cycles and increased marketing costs, and other vendors have a greater market presence and deeper pockets than Qualcomm. Handset vendors like Oki Telecom Inc. and Siemens already have bowed out of the cdmaOne market, unable to keep their cost structures intact as handset prices fall. Qualcomm's other divisions, like the infrastructure business, may be on the sale block as well, speculate analysts. Many of the company's divisions will come under intense competition going forward. The San Diego-based company already has reorganized its infrastructure division and OmniTracs division and spun off operating interests to Leap Wireless International Inc. ‘‘The operating model doesn't make sense,'' said one analyst who declined to be named. ‘‘They could make more money as an ASICs and royalty company.'' Jane Zweig, vice president with Herschel Shosteck Associates Ltd. in Wheaton, Md., agrees. Her firm has predicted for nearly a year a sell-off would occur. ‘‘The ASICs division is successful,'' said Zweig. ‘‘Qualcomm is about R&D, CDMA developments and chips ... Chips are a revenue-generating unit. Almost everyone licenses their chips.'' Indeed, Qualcomm indicated in a recent Securities and Exchange Commission filing that it believes it has a significant advantage over other existing and potential manufacturers of CDMA ASICs. The company recently introduced its fifth-generation ASIC chipset for cdmaOne handsets, featuring data rates greater than 64 kilobits per second. DSP Communications Inc., LSI Logic Corp., VSLI Technology and PrairieComm Inc. have license arrangements with Qualcomm to sell ASICs, yet none have come to market with a commercial cdmaOne chipset. Through September, Qualcomm shipped about 25 million ASICs to cdmaOne handset manufacturers worldwide. A substantial portion of the sales have been made to international customers, primarily South Korean vendors. Analysts say Qualcomm should enjoy significant headway in the ASICs business for many years. Industry experts also say selling off the handset division would remove any barriers for Qualcomm in selling ASICs chipsets to other handset vendors. ‘‘Because Qualcomm sells ASICs to its own handset competitors, any competitive move the company makes in the handset business is viewed cynically,'' said Matt Hoffman, handset analyst with Dataquest in San Jose, Calif. ‘‘As Qualcomm faces more competition in the ASICs segment, they may need to remove any barriers to being a supplier in that space.'' For Siemens, purchasing Qualcomm's handset business would bring it back into the North American market it desperately wants a piece of on the infrastructure and handset side. The company is pulling its Global System for Mobile communications handset product line out of North America after the first quarter, citing cost factors. Earlier this year, the company decided to scale back its efforts in cdmaOne technology after announcing it planned to introduce a cdmaOne handset in the first quarter of 1998. It moved its R&D project back to Germany. ‘‘North America is critical to Siemens, and we are not exiting the business,'' Kristine Ryan, public relations manager for Siemens, said in December. ‘‘We only have one GSM phone, and GSM is a small piece of the (domestic) wireless market.'' Key executives remain in Richardson, Texas.