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

To: LindyBill who wrote (29476)	5/8/1999 6:28:00 AM
From: Michael	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 152472

Qualcomm hit with a lawsuit uniontrib.com Disgruntled employees potentially numbering in the hundreds filed a class-action lawsuit against Qualcomm yesterday, in a fight to keep millions of dollars in unvested stock options. The employees, including a vice president, are the intellectual backbone of Qualcomm's wireless infrastructure equipment business, which Swedish archrival Ericsson bought as part of a sweeping patent settlement the two companies reached in March. The lawsuit demands "immediate vesting" of unvested stock options and "full, fair and just compensation" in monetary damages that all told could top $50 million, said Richard Williams, an attorney with one of three local law firms that filed the lawsuit on behalf of the employees. More . . .

To: LindyBill who wrote (29476)	5/8/1999 7:07:00 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 152472

LindyBill, if everyone just does what they said they'd do in the contracts they agreed to, everything would be hunky dory. Provided of course that the contracts were honest, not underhand or illegal. Sometimes, things don't work out well and there is disappointment all around. That's life. Grin and bear it. If Qualcomm gives money contrary to agreements to laid off employees or to those who are transferred to L M Ericsson as part of the infrastructure division, then Qualcomm is damaging remaining employees' stock value and THEY will start a class action lawsuit. As already suggested by others, the satisfactory settlement of the dispute would more likely enhance the company's value, but some might not see it that way. Squabbling over the profits was not what Bill Frezza meant when he thought that Qualcomm would end in lawsuits. He meant people would be sueing for lack of profits and failed CDMA networks. At least this is a better problem for Irwin and Co to solve. It always seems odd to me that employees can be 'sold' with a division of a company. I understand that if we all sell our Qualcomm shares to Ericy, then the company entity continues and there is a new owner. But when a division or the assets of a division are sold, the employees are fired and rehired by the buying company under new contracts. So the reality for the infrastructure employees is that they have been fired. Now L M Ericsson wants to hire them [to continue as they are to all intents and purposes, but under new management and employed by another company]. I don't think I really 'get it'. I suppose the deal between Qualcomm and Ericy would be that unless a certain number of employees sign up to work for Ericy, then the deal is not completed. If they hold off on signing up unless they get a good deal, then the division would simply be closed, they'd get nothing, Qualcomm would miss out on the sales and royalties from the division, Ericy would get nothing too, and would have to start from scratch. Presumably buying just the assets and hiring people as best they could to get things rolling again. That would work, but be very messy, take a long time and cost them heaps. I bet Ericy wants the deal more than Q! does. If Q! ends up closing the division, rehiring for other purposes those people who can fit in elsewhere and simply laying off the rest, they'll not really lose a huge amount. Lucent and other licensees will fill Ericy's shoes to supply NTT, China and elsewhere. Any explanation appreciated. Mqurice

To: LindyBill who wrote (29476)	5/8/1999 8:59:00 AM
From: Freeflight	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

Industry needs to settle dispute over IP ownership between Qualcomm and Ericsson and present a united marketing front to the world for CDMA. Clearly, the agreement will give Ericsson a competitive position against the likes of Lucent, Motorola, Nortel and Samsung. One could argue the market share projections for the various remaining standards, but it seems clear that there will be multi modes with incompatibilities for a long time. As operators are scrambling to add new, enhanced services, they are buying equipment that supports the current second generation (2G) digital cellular standards, GSM, TDMA, CDMA and PCD. In spite of the Qualcomm/Ericsson agreement to converge their technologies to a single air interface, the major emerging third generation (3G) W-CDMA standard will require support of 3 different modes and technology implementations: Japanese wideband CDMA, European UTRA wideband CDMA, and US cdma2000. As a result, basestation, handset and semiconductor component manufacturers are forced to undertake costly R & D initiatives to develop products that support these new standards. Network operators must buy disparate basestations that are costly to acquire and maintain. Morphics' Dynamically Reconfigurable Logic (DRL) technology enables architectures that address these challenges. The Morphics technology enables wireless equipment manufacturers to support multiple air interface protocols with reduced costs. Using the adaptive solution from Morphics, basestation and handset manufacturers can design consolidated product platforms that can dynamically reconfigure themselves to handle any protocol. Further proof of the broad application of the Morphics technology is evidenced in the recent commitment to finance the technology from industry related venture funds - GSM Capital (a cellular focused fund funded by 9 leading GSM operators, including France Telecom, Deutsche Telecom and Sing Tel) and BCE Capital (the telecommunications venture investment of Bell Canada and Nortel Networks). Heavy technical and strategic due diligence was undertaken by these investors and the commitment was made in spite of the “one standard” proposed by Qualcomm/Ericsson.