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Technology Stocks : Nokia (NOK) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tero kuittinen who wrote (1823)	4/21/1999 12:02:00 PM
From: DaveMG	Respond to of 34857

Listen..I think you have a lot to say but I think you muck it up with statements like the one I quoted. So far, QCOM is the undisputed CDMA technological leader. I don't see how you can make a credible argument that disputes this. Q has the patents, the chipset lead to prove it. Of course this may all change but for now that is the case. You single out the handset biz for criticism and behave as if all those new handsets being sold in Japan today have nothing to with Q. You point to specs and "prove" that Q is a loser. Engineer has stated repeatedly that specs don't tell the whole story. For some reason, a lot of companies are happy to buy those chips, the same chips that go into QCOM's own phones. Some of these companies have far flung consumer electronics businesses and should not be dismissed lightly, take Toshiba for instance. You don't think they're thinking about wireless 1 1/2 lb laptops for instance, laptops that'll have high speed data rates with great displays etc, running on guess whose chip? I could go on. .. As Gregg has stated Q has some built in advantages when it comes to phone margins, ie royalties and the the successful ASIC division. Will Nokia compete? Of course they'll use their HUGE profits to mount a real fight, a fight which will pressure everyones margins. But what is Nokias capacity today? Isn't it about 1 million phones per week? Q shipped 9 million MSM's last quarter. How many is that per week? Getting close I'd say. Q is leveraging the R&D budgets of all those licensees.ANd Q has a distinct advantage over everyone else. Q designs the lions share of Base station ASICS, so it's easier for them to design MSMs that fit well. Can all this change? Sure. Is it a slam dunk for "you guys"? I don't think so. Nokia, Mot, and Ericsson are the ones with mkt share to lose since they are by definition the leaders. AS of Dec 1998 GSM had 138 mil subs, CDMAone 23 mil. We'll have to keep close watch on these numbers. And yes by the looks of all the Nokia ATT phones I see on the street, TDMA is doing very well too. I admit I don't understand what's going on with sales growth and I will become concerned if things don't change soon but lets not forget we have had very very high sales growth until the last 2 quarters, and we still have e reasonable yr/yr growth. At this point it seems Q is a bit of a push-me pull-you.. We'll see how long Nokia keeps up the pace. It also "appears" that Q decided to give in on the standards war in exchange for a guaranteed piece of the pie. It's not to early to prognosticate about what will happen, we'll just have to wait and see how it all turns out. Dave