Qualcomm Inc (QCOM)

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Qualcomm's Strong Brew
06.03.05, 11:06 AM ET


http://www.forbes.com/markets/2005/06/03/0603automarketscan06.html?partner=yahootix&referrer=

Piper Jaffray maintained an "outperform" rating and $50 target price on Qualcomm (nasdaq: QCOM - news - people ), saying the stock's current valuation provides an attractive long-term opportunity. "We remain comfortable in our expectations for 3G sell-in and sell-through trends during the second half of 2005 and 2006," Piper said. Qualcomm executives have said the company's initiatives in the BREW mobile platform are starting to generate operating profits. "We were encouraged to learn the industry has earned $350 million in BREW-related revenue since its launch in 2001," Piper said, "and we were impressed to learn that 75% of this amount has been earned in the past six months." Piper said it was impressed with Qualcomm's recent demonstration of BREW for Business, a platform to allow enterprises to deploy enterprise applications to BREW-enabled devices. "We believe this reflects Qualcomm's continued efforts to provide carriers tools with which they can target customer segments," Piper said. The research firm said Verizon Wireless also provided positive data, saying 120 million of its 200 million cumulative BREW application downloads have occurred in the past six months. Verizon Wireless is a joint venture between Verizon Communications (nyse: VZ - news - people ) and Vodafone (nyse: VOD - news - people ). In the CDMA market, Piper said upside to Qualcomm's recently lowered June and September results is limited. "However, once pockets of WCDMA and CDMA2000 inventory burn off over the next few months, we expect strong growth in Qualcomm's royalty and chipset revenue," the research firm said.