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

To: Mike Buckley who wrote (30162)	5/17/1999 10:26:00 AM
From: Michael	Respond to of 152472

cnn.com old news about US West/Qualcomm phone deal but new article sure is a nice day Michael

To: Mike Buckley who wrote (30162)	5/17/1999 11:26:00 AM
From: DaveMG	Respond to of 152472

Mike, Bux, LindyBill, and All. I think I was trying to say that we have to separate royalties (architecture) from applications ( things that use the architecture ie ASICS, handsets, etc). As far as I can tell the settlement/agreement did in fact secure the future as far as royalties/architecture are concerned, that this has to be chalked up as a big WIN for Q, that regardless of flavor, QCOM will receive identical royalties in 3G, highlighting that Q IPR is PARAMOUNT, that nothing can be done without it because it is ESSENTIAL.Whether or not QCOM had and gave up or never had control of the architecture is to some extent moot( with respect to royalties), although Qs power to disrupt the whole process was clearly manifest. I assume the reason Moore confers kingship upon Ericsson is because they have been able to leverage the installed GSM base in their attempt to co-opt QCOMs CDMA and have been somewhat successful to the extent that QCOM has chosen to cede control over the particular parameters for 3GWCDMA. Nonetheless we do know, given the royalty arrangement, that these parameters are peripheral to the central CDMA aspect, that whether the pilot is synchronous or asynch, whether the chiprate is 3.6x or 100,etc., QCOM CDMA remains at the center. The only questions remaining with respect to royalties therefore are how fast and big will the CDMA rollout be? Where things are obviously much more complex is in the handset/ASIC, GSM/CDMA battlefield, and it is in this arena that one can argue that QCOM may have been compromised by the settlement/royalty arrangement. We will have to wait and see what the ultimate WCDMA specs are, how much convergence/harmonization with CDMA2000 there is or isn't. When the specs are published we may learn how much “control” QCOM has given up over the architecture, whether Ericsson and GSMers may have been able to damage Qs ability to successfully compete in the 3G handset/ASIC (applications) marketplace, to what extent this whole standards game will hijack the growth of CDMAone. Even today, in the 2G world, although things look good right now, QCOMs position as ASIC and handset manufacturer is by no means secured, and while QCOM has clearly benefited from the "deal", the deal in and of itself will not provide any form of guarantee in this respect (in contrast to royalties). This is the part of the game where execution is paramount, where QCOM because it is smaller will have to constantly outperform in order just to stay in the game, let alone lead the pack. And QCOM is dependent upon not only its own performance but that of its' licensee partners. As I said before, it does little good if Nokia is late with its' new models and QCOM, Sony, Sanyo, Denso, Samsung, etc., don't quickly fill the void. This game at this point, in GG parlance, is still one of Royalty. Mike:“The only thing that would pursuade me to think control has been relinquished is if someone can convince me that so many compromises were made in getting the architecture accepted by the standards committees that Qualcomm can no longer throw competitors out of kilter with continuing innovations to CDMA.” I'm not at all sure that any of this really applies. Has QCOM ever been in a position to tweak the architecture to its' advantage vis a vis competitors? Isn't it usually that a company which already dominates the marketplace takes advantage of this dominance by tweaking its' products, to which everyone must them conform? And I wonder about the ultimate usefulness of concentrating on this proprietary architecture thing. Was it proprietary architecture that enabled MSFT to conquer the desktop or was it superior business acumen? Is it really Slot1 or whatever it's called that allows INTC to keep AMD at bay? Someone else has already posted that the GG model seems better at describing the Gorilla than predicting who it'll be. DMG