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Spider, the insider selling is only old news to those who follow this stock every minute of the day. In fact, insider selling is the most recent news we have out of this company that is of any significance.
I predict that by November 2004 there will be another mass exodus of IDCC management/directors and a whole new team will slide in to replace them.
Once
I'm completely speechless...
Once
Let's try this one again. A humorous song! Do you know anyone with a camel toe?
Once
[Suppressed Sound Link]
Actually Spree, Postyle is right, it's not the number of cases, it's the rate of growth and SARS is still spreading at an accelerating rate. Hopefully there will be a vaccine or medicine to bring it under control but the troubling thing about SARS is that it appears to mutate at a higher rate than is typical.
I think in all likelihood SARS won't have a long-term impact on phone sales but don't discount the seriousness of the disease.
Once
Test
Hey, at least I'm pretty well informed about something, <g>.
It's a fine European Sport-Touring machine with a 4-valve 90 degree V-Twin engine that just won't stop and hard luggage standard. A Ducati ST4s.
Once
Dood! For sure you don't want a backrest for female passengers. You want them holding on for dear life. Plus, the extra danger and excitement seems to really gear them up if you know what I mean. As an added bonus, some will hold on in the damndest places, I doubt many would do that with a backrest although I wouldn't know. I only had one bike that came with a backrest and I took it off before my first motorcycle date.
For sure get #2, that is if you want to go anywhere.
You might want to spend more time on the bike before you decide on handlebar risers. At higher speeds the wind becomes a factor. I would make the decision based on how it rides at speed. Not being familiar with the ergonomics of the VTX, well that's just a very personal thing.
#4) Windshield, good for pansies and old men.
#5 Whatever floats your boat dood. I can't see paying extra for a muffler that just draws attention to you, that is unless you will be riding like Mary Poppins and don't mind a little extra attention from the man.
Don't worry about depreciating assets, a motorcycle is not a real asset anyway, it's a liability. But a fun liability.
Once
Here's a link to some cool performance mods you might like:
http://www.kalecoauto.com/perf.htm
Once
Chris, I'm wondering where you used to live when you referred to all foreign bikes as "rice burners"? I have only heard that term apply to Japanese motorcycles. Of course "metrics" always included all the foreign makes except for the British. There may have been some obscure makes that also would not fall under that term, I don't know.
But here's the good news, everyone that I've ever known that has loved motorcycles has always associated Japanese and "metric" with high quality! So have no fear, it looks like Harley is modernizing finally. I wonder what kind of fasteners Triumph is using these days? Anyone know?
Once
Mickey, correct me if I'm wrong but I believe we have seen this sort of big block buying/selling before, and it wasn't right before the price jumped up.
Once
Look out for debris on the track, you wouldn't want to pull a 'Mario', LOL!
Have fun and keep the shiny side up!
Once
Hey wannabe, what a trip! Like your selections but it's really cool to hear them all at once. For some reason the Boston and a couple others seem to stand out. Maybe they are louder?
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msgs.asp?board_id=1654&NextStart=1&BatchSize=100
Maybe that's why they call me "Once" <g>
Once
I disagree.
"Seems the sellers are gone for now. I think we will waltz past 24 this time. Higher highs, higher lows. jmho."
Without news I believe we are very close to having reached an over-bought condition, at least temporarily. Look for the $20 range soon (or perhaps even lower) unless news comes along.
Once
Rich, I noticed that you had called that one expertly. Good observation.
In general the part that struck me the hardest regarding the whole CC was their very conservative projections regarding WCDMA growth. I can tell they want WCDMA to take off in the worst way and yet feel they have strong indications that it won't happen anytime soon. It's effectively still shutting them out of the GSM market. They can't step in and compete with CDMA2000 and yet they also can't sell WCDMA yet, something's holding it up.
Very frustrating, I imagine. I guess patience is required.
Once
Mschere, I would like it if you would mention the source of the information you cut and paste into your posts. I'm pretty sure those aren't your words but I see you have signed it at the bottom.
Also, I assume your post is a response to a post by someone else but since you didn't hit the "Reply" button I can't put your post in context of the rest of the discussion. You do this often and it would help us all if you could just exercise the courtesy of following these two common conventions you could be a much more valuable contributor.
Once
Mschere, Your suggestion that Qualcomm could have retired 5700 workers and retained just 300 engineers and earned a greater profit on less revenue shows how short-sighted you are and why IDCC's business model is likely to fail. Qualcomm knows you have to continually provide value to collect the kind of returns you see. As those returns grow larger, the value contribution must also. Manufacturers will only go so far before you have a mass rebellion. They don't like the fact that IDCC is filing patent after patent simply in an effort to leverage payment for those patents, they want to see some value added to the product. That's what Qualcomm did when they developed IS-95 and then CDMA2000.
But back to your suggestion. Personally, I think 91% profit margins for the technology licensing division of Qualcomm is pretty damn impressive. $260 million in revenue and $236 million in pre-tax profits! Now I'm no longer intimately familiar with Qualcomm's accounting practices but it would appear that it only cost $24 million to license their technology. If only IDCC were that efficient!
But Qualcomm has people working on all fronts of leading edge technologies to advance the state of the art and they also have teams of people studying and measuring trends so they can be sure their development efforts are properly focussed. In comparison it makes IDCC appear to be a real back-woods company with their 300 total employees (including janitors, etc). This is not the picture of a company on the fore-front of a multi-billion dollar market and able to keep up with new developments, market trends, etc. That's absolutely required if IDCC ever hopes to compete in the chip market. As far as collecting IPR royalties, those will just wither up and die if IDCC cannot stay focussed on the leading edge.
Somehow me thinks their silence is more a reflection of being away from the leading edge than being caused by being too busy to communicate their latest developments.
Once
I suppose the bright side of this WCDMA delay is that it gives IDCC plenty of time to hit that "market window" that was so often mentioned a year or two ago with regard to 3G chips (remember that?). Anyone heard an update from the company on their 3G chip development effort? It's been awfully quiet. Are they really planning to develop a chip that will compete with offerings from Qualcomm, Samsung and Nokia on price and features?
In the past I've made the argument that it's really hard for a niche player like IDCC to compete in such a competitive market and I still believe that more firmly than ever. Heck, even Intel would like to be a player but I don't think they have what it takes to stay on the leading edge of the fast-moving mobile phone chip market.
IMO, it would be more bullish for IDCC if they announced they had given up on their 3G "System on a Chip" development efforts rather than to continue to waste money in a field that, IMO, they don't stand a chance of ever pulling a profit. A misguided effort if there ever was one. I lost a lot of respect for IDCC when they started talking about bringing a 3G SoC to market.
I would like to know the status of this effort. Have they been buying the latest test equipment that is required for this type of effort? I know it can get expensive.
Once
Re: Nokia's speech codec you wrote:
Reading ellismd's ref post about a new speech codec for CDMA2000 makes the point about how "essential" content continues to change in the UMTS standards. In this example the CDMA2000 standards group selected a contribution from Nokia, and that means it will replace the current speech codec which may have been invented by somebody else(don't know who).
It was Qualcomm who developed the current CDMA2000 variable rate speech codec. Qualcomm also has some early pioneering patents on variable rate speech codecs which almost certainly cover the codec developed by Nokia. It's important to distinguish between someone (in this case Nokia) developing something using others patents and someone inventing something completely fresh. In practice most inventions are built upon other, earlier inventions but the most valuable ones are the most essential and the hardest to work around.
In this example, it's probably impossible to work around Qualcomm's speech codec patents and still get the same or similar functionality. But the Nokia codec is not nearly as valuable because the existing Qualcomm codec already did 95% of the job. It was widely praised for it's efficiency and natural sounding voice. Of course any codec will start to sound funny when the bit rate error is high. My point is that the Nokia solution will not have as much leverage to collect royalties as Qualcomm's codec IPR.
Once
Interesting article Eneerg. Politics aside, it does seem like Iraq should recieve a CDMA2000 system. They need voice services immediately and CDMA will give that too them. But Iraq is also a modern country with many educated and technologically skilled citizens. CDMA 1X will allow mobile data services up to 144kbps and all for the same low cost that a GSM system would cost. That would really blow the minds of the Iraqi tech-heads!
With multi-mode chips (CDMA/GSM) the issue of roaming is really a moot point.
Once
I'm not sure I should divulge the e-mail in public but if Matt doesn't have a problem with it and Jim say's it's o.k., I will do that. Otherwise Jim and I could take care of it via e-mail. I just wanted to give everyone the heads-up that someone on the list was using some of those e-mail addresses for nefarious purposes.
Once
Jim, if you like I can send you the e-mail address of the person who sent me the virus and you can delete them from the list. We shouldn't allow people who use the list to send viruses to continue to benefit from the list.
Once
Jim, I appreciate you scanning the e-mails for viruses before sending but the real threat is when some unsavory character gets a hold of the list. I've already received an executable virus that was e-mailed to me from someone on the e-mail list you compiled. Fortunately, I am smart enough to know not to open up executables but everyone might not know this. People, please don't open e-mail executables!
Unfortunately, deleting the list won't solve anything since some unsavory characters already have a copy of it. Future mailings could use the BCC (blind carbon copy) function to insure that other unsavory characters don't get a hold of list addresses.
Thanks,
Once
There's a couple more over here:
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/board.asp?board_id=30
Once
Likewise, on the IDCC board we still welcome the get rich quick dreamers even though their message is silly and not supported by the facts. Someone might like to read that stuff.
Once
Eli, when I say "industry insiders" I mean those who work in the wireless industry, mostly software and radio engineers but also lawyers and technicians. A lot of them used to participate on wireless usenet newsgroups but it's not as common now, I'm not sure if their employers suggested they maintain a lower profile or whether they just got tired of people who didn't know what they were talking about trying to tell them how it really worked, LOL!
Some wireless engineers participated on SI, but never on the IDCC thread for some reason. Actually, I think one did contribute one post to the IDCC thread but they told him "how it was" and he left, never to return, LOL! One of the web links in my profile has a link to a post of one engineer who has been very generous with his technical knowledge and industry perspectives over the years but most industry insights I gleaned from usenet and via e-mail.
I hope that helps,
Once
Bulldzr, you haven't understood my message very well. I haven't told anyone they are dummies for investing in IDCC, my goal is to correct the misleading information that is posted around here. A review of the record will verify that. If you are going to make false accusations then I have the right to defend myself and demand proof.
Then you claim that because IDCC is higher now then it was at the beginning of the year the story the longs have been presenting is vindicated. I'm sorry but the stock price movement during the previous 3-4 months tells us little about the long-term returns that can be expected from a company like IDCC. Remember, with a beta of 5.2 IDCC is bound to fluctuate in price. It's unusually high beta means it will go up and down 5.2 times as far as the average stock. Don't use natural and historic fluctuations to declare vindication. For example, IDCC has risen above $20/share at least three other times in it's history, once as early as 1986. Great things were predicted but in 12 short months those $20 shares were worth less than $5. Then, the same thing happened in 1999, at the height of the greatest bull market ever. Once again, it was proclaimed that IDCC had left it's checkered past behind, great things would be happening soon, chips, new licensees and revenues that would boggle the mind. But, again, within about 12 months the price was right back to $5/share.
I don't have a problem with people who want to bet on IDCC, I've done it myself a number of times and have a respectable profit to show from it. So, as long as the risks of such a volatile stock are understood I think IDCC is a good candidate for trading profits. But my long-term opinion is that IDCC is unlikely to provide the superior long-term results that the smart money should be looking for. I base this on many things including the unprofessionalism and greed that management has displayed as well as the opinions of other knowledgeable industry insiders.
My opinion on these matters has not changed since I started following IDCC around 1998, I have been consistent to the extreme. So it's rather embarrassing for me to watch you proclaim grand victory over the evil Onceinalifetime with a dramatic sweep of your arm. Who do you think you are fooling?
Once
Dsteel, that's an interesting observation:
"There are a lot of extremely bright engineers working in this exciting field of wireless. To Interdigital's credit, they appear to have a highly talented number of them."
Are you basing this on anything specific, something you would care to share with us, or are you just saying it because it sounds good?
A sincere question,
Once
I'm not convinced:
"Assurances that patents are relevant to the modern communications system become moot when you have big dogs in the industry wanting to play the indemnification game."
Seems to me, those "big dogs" wouldn't be putting their money where their mouth is if the patents were applicable. That could get expensive fast. No, indemnification is most likely to occur when there has been plenty of review and there is little to no chance of significant infringement.
Once
Mickey, where the heck did you get a 60 day time frame for Nokia to decide upon a royalty rate? Are you just pulling numbers out of a hat again?
Once
Mschere, do you have to try to turn everything into a positive, even when it isn't?
"I can not recall IDCC giving more than 10 days notice for any earnings report.. and now we are given more than 3 WEEKS notice ...Can any one recall a similar precedent?..IMO: They will be providing more significant news within that three week period and attempt to attract a much bigger audience for that report..."
The last earnings release was announced two weeks in advance and the 2nd Q 2002 was announced with three weeks notice:
http://www.interdigital.com/press_room_news_archive_detail.jsp?releaseId=316628&cb=1050965494780
It just goes to show you can't believe everything you hear.
Once
Thanks Matt, you are a real gem!
Once
Churak, you had me laughing out loud! I like your sense of humor! If only the IDCC'ers wouldn't take IDCC so seriously I think we would all get along better.
Once
I see. Do you care to answer the second question or is that something I will have to ask the expert?
1) Why do the two types of searches behave differently when I try to return to the list of hits?
2) Is there a way I can configure my browser to avoid this?
Jim, I'm surprised you didn't notice that was old, recycled news. It was first published last summer!
http://www.inc.com/magazine/20020801/24451.html
Once
Thanks for posting that Greed, I find it very interesting:
"Compensation: Pay Per New
To foster innovation, you must reward innovation. Most of the companies on our list do so with cash or stock options for specific inventions. Consider the incentive program at InterDigital Communications Corp., which develops advanced wireless technologies. Employees who come up with a patentable invention get more than 2,000 options: one-third vest when the patent is filed, two-thirds when it's granted. There's also an Inventors' Dinner for those who've filed for or have been awarded patents that year. The dinner recognizes -- with cash awards -- the individual or team named as inventor on the year's most valuable patent, the person named as inventor on the most patents, and employees who've reached certain "plateaus" (by being named inventor on 5, 10, or 15 patents, say). Cash awards start at less than $1,000 and grow with the number of patents. The program was created to encourage "an atmosphere of collegial competition," says patent lawyer Kimberly Chotkowski. It's worked. In 2001, InterDigital applied for 256 patents, five times the number it applied for in 1999."
IMO, this is the crux of the problem at IDCC. The lawyers who run the company put too much emphasis on the number of patents and not enough emphasis on making sure the patents are relevant to modern communication systems. As long as the Patent Office actually issues the patent, that's good enough for them to count it. To me it appears as if management is encouraging the mass filing of patents and they will figure out later how to try to leverage those into payments from others.
Once
Revlis, IMO any $52/share buyout rumors have no credibility. IDCC buyout rumors have popped up ever since I started following IDCC around 1998 and they are always found to be nothing more than wishful thinking of IDCC longs.
BTW, what offer are you referring to when you say "We can thank IDCC for turning down the offer even before IDCC knew of the indemnification issue."? I hadn't heard that they turned down any offers. Did I miss it?
Once
Mschere, I don't believe anyone has claimed Qualcomm collects 5% on infrastructure sales, probably closer to 1.3%-1.9%.
"When Qualcomm accounts for the 5% of $6 Billion of installed WCDMA infrastructure to date ($300 million in their recurring royalty revenue) will I become concerned regarding my IDCC investment."
Furthermore, the $6 Billion figure you present as WCDMA infrastructure costs is a total amount. Qualcomm only collects a percentage of the cost of specific components of the WCDMA infrastructure, not the whole ball of wax.
Bottom line is Qualcomm will never collect as many infrastructure royalties as you are expecting. To your credit, you greatly over-estimate Qualcomm's future royalties just as you do IDCC's.
Once
Mschere, I have seen this statement held up many times as proof that CDMA2000 manufacturers will need additional licenses from IDCC but must of them are currently manufacturing CDMA2000 products without a IDCC license and IDCC is letting them do it, they are not filing any injunctions to get them to stop or trying to recover past royalties.
"Based on these limitations, the Siemens and the Qualcomm agreements do not provide a license under all the ITC patents or IPR Holdings Patents which we believe to be essential to 3G, including CDMA 2000, or all of the inventions which we believe will be essential and which are contained in pending patent applications."
I can only conclude that IDCC must have changed their mind about the above statement, after all, according to IDCC's own disclosures they are under no obligation to inform shareholders if any of their past statements are found to be false. Otherwise, wouldn't they be raising a fuss instead of just letting people steal their IPR? My advice: Look at what IDCC does, not what they say they believe.
Once