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

To: JGoren who wrote (25079)	3/25/1999 6:00:00 PM
From: Ruffian	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

JGoren, See post 25076.<eom>

To: JGoren who wrote (25079)	3/25/1999 7:24:00 PM
From: Clarksterh	Read Replies (6) \| Respond to of 152472

CC Notes: 1) The Ericsson CEO referred to Ericsson as "the leader in wideband CDMA" multiple times. Note the lack of the capital W in wideband. Undoubtedly Ericsson can claim that they just meant W-CDMA, but also it is without doubt that they meant to give the impression that CDMA-2000 is not wideband. I actually know what the W-CDMA acronym stands for and it still threw me. My first reaction was 'what gall' until I realized that he was 'intending' to refer to W-CDMA. Imagine what a Business Week reporter, who is less familiar with the whole history, thinks. 2) IPR. Ericsson and Qualcomm agreed to x-license for CDMA (but in answer to a question about worldphones I would guess that Qualcomm still does not have a full GSM license. I assume that Qualcomm does have a full license for GSM MAP which is now required for all 3g CDMA systems - but it wasn't completely clear.) As for royalty rates, the absolute amounts were not discussed, except to say that they would total to the same amount for all modes. (I suspect that Ericsson gets more for W-CDMA and less for CDMA-2000 incentivising them to still push the W-CDMA mode over CDMA-2000 - but again it wasn't clear.) Finally, one aspect of the IPR agreement was one sided. Qualcomm got the right to sublicense IPR to ASIC customers, but Ericsson was conspicuously lacking mention in regards to this right. 3) Ericsson said that the main purpose of the San Diego infrastructure facility is to allow them to develop CDMAOne family solutions without taking resources away from their W-CDMA development efforts. (This indicates no particular plan to converge on chip rate or other differences.) 4) Dr. J gave one reason that I hadn't considered before for it being especially good for Ericsson to handle infrastructure. Ericsson builds their own switches. 5) Ericsson expects to offer their first CDMAOne family of phones early next year. 6) When asked about how much cash Qualcomm is getting for the infrastructure division, and what it plans on doing with it, Dr. J would not give the amount, and said that in any case it would be used as vendor financing. (Now that Qualcomm no longer supplies infrastructure equipment, what the heck is vendor financing? Does he mean paying down debt that has already been incurred for vendor financing? In that case it sounds like they didn't get much for the division.) 7) Ericsson will initially buy Qualcomm infra ASIC's and will consider buying handset ASIC's. ( I and some of the questioners interpretted this to mean they were going to try their damdest to develop their own ASIC's for handsets at least.) 8) Dr. J. was asked a question about why a multi-mode standard was so much better that multiple standards. The only clear answer he gave was that all 3g standards will be compatible with IS-41 and GSM MAP. On the topic of air interface he was extremely non-commital. ( Hence my conclusion, confirmed by Perry, that chip rate etc is still at least an open issue.) 9) Dr J. said he didn't know how much of the backlog will go with the infrastructure division. 10) Dr. J. said that Qualcomm will still be involved in the infrastructure of HDR trials and will continue the 25% infrastructure relationship with Nortel. But Qualcomm has no intention of getting back into the infrastructure business. Clark PS If anyone has any questions or corrections, feel free to ask them or make them.