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

To: Morgan Drake who wrote (25472)	3/29/1999 8:20:00 AM
From: Dave	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

Morgan: The facts* are that the biggest CDMA handset manufacturers are actively pursuing alternate sources of CDMA technology* I would agree with that statement, but pursuing a new supplier and actually designing a quality ASIC are entirely two different animals. To Qualcomm's ASIC competition, I would say Good Luck... Remember, it has taken Nokia (whom Tero loves quite dearly) several years to design a quality ASIC and Nokia's CDMA phone is not out as of yet. So, who knows, whether the ASIC is thtat great or not. With respect to his patent statement. Patent Applications which were filed before the GATT deadline (which is some date in June of 1995) are given a life of 17 years from Patent Publication date. All applications that are filed after that GATT deadline are given a life of 20 years from original date of filing. I think that the person on the Yahoo thread is mis-informed about Qualcomm's patents. I would say that a majority of Qualcomm's patents were issued in the 90s and not in the early 80s as that person on the Yahoo thread claimed. hope that helps, dave

To: Morgan Drake who wrote (25472)	3/29/1999 8:50:00 AM
From: DaveMG	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

Amazing how one Boogey Man always replaces the previous... One of the most important things to remember IMO is that we're dealing with an EXPLODING MKTPLACE. Take China as an example.Japan, Brazil, Mexico, need I say more? This question of whether Q can be the Intel of CDMA is an interesting one but it'll be a long time before we find out and in all liklihood it cannot. Intel dominates at least as much because of manufacturing prowess as anything else. Nobody else can build chip factories on the same scale, as efficiently, spread all over the globe. They've perfected their formula, they have incredible gross margins. Obviously we're a long way from that. QCOM has created tremendous opportunity for itself out of thin air, an accomplishment that should give shareholders some confidence that they'll be able to navigate the perrenially treacherous waters with some fanfare. Q has some built in advantages, the most obvious being royalties, next the fact that they control what licensees are allowed to do with their technology. Notice they haven't licensed INTEL or IBM to make ASICs on their own, and MOT, NOKIA etc cannot resell ASICS. Tero studiously avoided to mention those 20 some OEMs who are buying Q chips which represent Q's "virtual" manufacturing operation, who do their own R&D and have their own relationships with operators and distributors. These types of value chains are not so easily replaced, especially when one takes into consideration Q's central CDMA position. The thing we can be sure of though is that because of the size of the mkt it's gonna be a very hotly contested space.