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

To: Clarksterh who wrote (28491)	4/27/1999 11:36:00 AM
From: engineer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

On #2, the semi industry is a tough business to be in. You must reserve FAB space 6 months or more in advance and then you are subject to things like wafer yeilds and such. It is common to book sales at least a quater ahead so that you can reserve your fab space ahead of time. Most of the semi companies will run BTB of 1.2 to 2. I think that the demand is just so good that they are pushing all orders as hard as they can. You can see that if they order the fab space 6 months ahead and there may be 5%-20% upside allocation at teh FAb house (depending on how good a customer you may be of that semi company), then if the demand hits more than your allocated upside, your stuck with a BTB. Turnaround time is like 3-4 months to get more fab space allocated, since the wafers and process takes about 6-7 weeks to run. Not sure of what is up with QCOM, but I think the people running it are busting their tails to catch up with demand. I know the contracts mgr and her team is one of the best out there.

To: Clarksterh who wrote (28491)	4/28/1999 9:09:00 AM
From: DaveMG	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 152472

Hi there fellow whiner, The only downside to last earnings report - 1) Qualcomm reported only a 25% growth in communications systems revenues. Nokia, in contrast had a 60% revenue growth. What's up? Is there some part of communications systems that is dragging down the performance? Certainly ASICs and handsets are both growing at very good unit levels and with increasing margins. I'm sure you thought of this but wouldn't the lack of infrastructure sales and the reduction in handset prices account for the slow rev growth? And now the usual questions.I realized that what I said the other day about ATT going with the the DS mode might be impossible because the spectrum won't be available. Is that right? And is there some important discrete technical significance in these labels.. direct sequence and spread spectrum? Dave