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

To: DaveMG who wrote (21720)	1/20/1999 7:04:00 PM
From: Kenneth V. McNutt	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

General Info: Speaking of rubber meets the road... With baby boomers getting to the age where they have more discretionary income, a recreational company that Rolfe thinks has a solid future is motorcycle manufacturer Harley-Davidson Inc. (HDI) in Milwaukee. Rolfe said he estimates that Harley will make 165,000 motorcycles this year, up more than 11% from last year. He expects the company to have $200 million in cash flow this year, double its 1998 amount. "They have a simple business plan, and they execute it very well," he said. and every one needs a CDMA handset. (my italics) Ken

To: DaveMG who wrote (21720)	1/20/1999 7:27:00 PM
From: blue_lotus	Respond to of 152472

Regarding OEM-type relationship. Greg wrote : >Important point #2: Irwin stated that the company was pursuing an additional OEM-type relationship, similar to the one that QC enjoys with Nortel. He specifically commented that the partner would likely come from a geography other than North America. Dave wrote: >Would Q really be forced into a JV with ERICY instead of Nokia for example, assuming Nokia was willing of course. If the OEM-type relationship is going to be with some one not from the U.S. why restrict only to Ericy or Nokia...... It could be Alcatel or Siemens too. But One thing is for sure, if it is going to be with a European player, it is going to effect the 3G debate a lot.... no matter which Euro player it happens to be. -Raj

To: DaveMG who wrote (21720)	1/20/1999 7:42:00 PM
From: Gregg Powers	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 152472

DaveMG: All sabre rattling aside, business is business. There is a wonderful book by Clayton Christensen entitled "The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail" that I would strongly encourage you to read as it describes Ericsson's problem perfectly. Simply put, by the time it became apparent that Qualcomm would be able to successfully commercialize direct sequence spread spectrum, Ericsson's TDMA-based GSM franchise seemed too big, too pervasive and too entrenched for the company's management (then Lars Ramqvist) to perceive CDMA as a bona fide threat. I think that Ramqvist absolutely believed that CDMA would either not work, or would be too late or would offer an insufficient competitive advantage to displace GSM. Back in the early 1990's, who among us would have correctly predicted the magnitude of the Internet revolution? When Ramqvist cemented his bet on TDMA-based GSM (by refusing to license IS-95) wireless data was an abstraction at best, nobody (and I mean nobody) was talking about high-data rate 3G and CDMA was little than a science project. Dealt these cards, Ericsson has played a fierce game, attempting to leverage its strengths at all turns. I do not begrudge Ericsson's attempts to protect itself...after all, its management is responsible to its shareholders just as Qualcomm's management is responsible to us. My quarrel with Ericsson management derives from their pattern of ethical abuses...read lies. This company repeatedly told its customers (and analysts and investors) that CDMA would not work; that CDMA's capacity gains versus TDMA-based GSM would prove illusory; that CDMA systems would collapse under load; that plague and pestilence would befall any carrier stupid enough to believe Qualcomm and its IS-95 licensees. I bitterly recall the September 1996 Wall Street Journal article ("Jacob's Patter") that attempted to paint Irwin as a snake oil salesman. Then, when empirically proven to be full of bull poo-poo, outrage of outrage, Ericsson had the audacity to tell the world that it invented CDMA and that its damn version is better than anybody elses. The sequence of events does tend to raise one's blood pressure. But, as I said before, business is business. Qualcomm management has repeatedly characterized Sven-Christer Nilsson as "reasonable" and "a good businessman." Irwin and Company are realistic enough to recognize that Ericsson was playing for keeps and that all is fair in love and war. While business deals CAN be thwarted by emotion, I have always perceived Irwin to be a thoughtful pragmatist. Remember how many of us begged and pleaded for Qualcomm to "strike back" at Ericsson and some of its hencemen (particularly those prone, shall we say, to deliberate "mistatements"...anybody for a ham and Suisse?)? Remember our angst when Qualcomm resolutely "turned the other cheek"? Well, I think Irwin has long believed that necessity makes for strange bedfellows. Let me be clear. I do NOT have inside information. This conclusion is based on my assessment of various puzzle pieces gleaned from many many sources. I DO NOT think that Ericsson will acquire Qualcomm and I DO NOT think that Qualcomm, taken as a whole, is for sale. I DO believe that Ericsson needs to have direct sequence spread spectrum equipment sooner as opposed to later AND I think that Qualcomm would like to materially improve its infrastructure volumes, its EPS and its shareholder value. If Ericsson could deliver a CDMA-based 3G solution immediately to its customers, the threat of convergence would be dramatically reduced AND its growth rate could accelerate materially. This is a victory for Ericsson and a victory for Qualcomm. As I said before, necessity makes for strange bedfellows and I detect a "softening" of the Ericsson position on many fronts. Even our "dear friend" at Credit "Swiss" seemed a little more benign than usual in his First Call hit piece. Just my two cents.... Best regards, Gregg

To: DaveMG who wrote (21720)	1/21/1999 5:11:00 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 152472

*Very on topic in the second half* Dave, You said: "...They'd of picked up a pretty good partner out of the haggling. But could QCOM stomach such a relationship?..." I couldn't resist. "Haggling" is I suppose a good description of how one does hagfish fishing. Could Q! stomach it? I heard they are delicious smoked and used as "cdmaOne makisushi" = Californian Sushi Rolls to yous. Wading through a near record number of posts in 24 hours. Thanks especially to Gregg for the post-results review and Jim Frost for the summary. And others for the many items which fill this thread and my head. It's been raining heavily here - [walked off a golf course today for the first time ever]. I wondered why I couldn't get ISP [Internet Service Provider] connection whereas my friend could. I've got a smart alecky geostationary download to a dish which peeks up at the sky. There is a little icon of a satellite dish on the bottom right corner of Windows 98, reminiscent of the Dubbo Gateway satellite tracking station for Globalstar. I clicked it and a little 'window' comes up with "Telsat Turbo Physical Status" with "Error Rate" in blue, red, yellow and green. "Signal Level" on top. I realized that rain must be absorbing the little orthogonal Gigahertzes so they don't make it to my smart alecky dish, because there was a lot of red [for not good] in the little window. There are also little circles which are either green or red. These are labelled: "Clock synchronization" "Carrier synchronization" "Viterbi synchronization" "Frame synchronization" "Reed-Solomon decoding" Speak of the devil thunk I! Re concatenated Reed-Solomon convolutional coding, turbo coding, synchronization and the like. I got quite a kick out of seeing Andrew Viterbi's name on it. Also "Telsat Turbo" and "Reed-Solomon decoding". Down in the corner of my Eudora window is "QUALCOMM". So my computer is full of QUALCOMM related stuff. These are arcane, but significant details in modern life. It means that rain is bad for being a golfing smart-aleck and that QUALCOMM really is on top of things. It doesn't say "Ericsson invented all this back in 1886!" - not anywhere. Here is my brainwave: ---------------------------------------------------------------- Also, is this a good idea? Eudora should be treated as an advertising agency. In cdmaSpectrum [Dec issue] which you can read at cdg.org it mentions that 75% of internet users have a cellphone and cellphone users are 4 times more likely to use the internet than other people. That means that cellphones and the internet are a club with members using both. Internet users use Email. Eudora is email with many millions of users. Yahoo! has a high market capitalisation although it is heavily down from the $445 peak I watched it hit without shorting it. That is [in part] because people expect them to sell a LOT of advertising based on "Page Views". So each time Eudora users hit "SEND" on Eudora, they are seeing QUALCOMM gazing resolutely at them from the bottom right corner. That is a free page view. Advertising sells. That is why people spend a LOT of money on advertising. After they push "SEND" they then pick up their cellphone or go down and by an analogue replacement. When they see "Q-Phone by QUALCOMM", they automatically get a "This is familiar and is therefore probably okay and I do like Eudora". So Eudora is a focused advertising platform. Don't ditch it!! Use it! It is part of the new paradigm. A near zero cost advertising medium which people download at their own expense into their own mailbox and see each day. No need to spend a fortune on tv or putting leaflets in 3D mailboxes. It might even be worth sending a $100 cheque to every 100th person who is a registered user of Eudora Light and $1000 to every 100th person who is a paid-up registered Eudora Pro user. Say there are 10 million users, that will be 10,000 x $100 = $1m. Do it each year. That would be a cheap advertising campaign. It seems worth it to pay $1 to each person who views "QUALCOMM" every time they use their email. Maybe the numbers need fiddling with, but something needs doing in the New Paradigm of Web advertising, software selling and leverage to hardware. Hoping somebody in Q! is thinking along these lines. It would be a shame to ditch Eudora because of 'losses' as a standalone business unit. That QUALCOMM name attached to "SEND" is worth a LOT of money. Mquarkce Value: Message 7388913