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

To: Gregg Powers who wrote (27143)	4/15/1999 3:48:00 PM
From: w molloy	Respond to of 152472

With the Holy War over, and Qualcomm positioned in a 'Microsoft'ian position with respect to royalties and an 'Intel'ian position with respect to ASICs, Your comment on Qualcomm positioning was interesting. Neither MSFT or INTC make PC's, hence my speculation regarding QCOM's handset division. Are you denying that QCOM would never sell it off? This brings to mind Sulpizio's reported statement to the SD Union Tribune (in early February) strongly denying that the company was grooming the infra division for a sale. Strong rumors continue to persist in SD that QCOM will divest itself of the handset division. These rumors are from the same sources that correctly called just how troubled the Infra division was (back in October '98) and its pending sale (early February 99) I presume you realize that Qualcomm has a substantial embedded margin advantage in handsets? I appreciate that there is an advantage derived from manufacturing ones own ASIC's. The downside is that ones handset competitors feel strongly compelled to go elsewhere for their own ASIC's. Samsung springs to mind. Their (claimed) $24mn research cost is hardly a fortune. I also would have thought that the realisable gross margin on an ASIC per se was somewhat larger than the gross margin on a complete handset. Putting the handset division issue on one side and looking ahead... How, in your view is QCOM geared for the inevitable commoditisation of the CDMA chipsets? INTC, for example, seems to be in a perpetual footrace, as todays premium devices become tomorrows basic engines. Regarding software (re the MSFT'ian positioning) how is the company addressing competion from the likes of ISOTEL, who have a couple of major design wins under their belt, most recently from Denso? Regards w.