Qualcomm Inc (QCOM)

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Qualcomm’s Flarion Adventure

http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=13156&hed=TechSpin%3A+Overstock+Sues+Shill§or=R....

Excerpt from above link:

Nobody likes Qualcomm and that could hurt Flarion, a company with a popular portfolio of technology, which Qualcomm announced on Thursday that it is acquiring (see Qualcomm’s Big Bid for Flarion). According to The Register, it may be a bit of an exaggeration to say “nobody” likes Qualcomm, but even the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) picked TDMA (time division multiple access) instead of CDMA (code division multiple access) technology for GSM (global system for mobile communications) because of the industry’s dislike for Qualcomm. Flarion did a great job of selling Flash-OFDM to those countries that rejected Qualcomm’s technology. And what Flarion needs, above all, is standards approval. The Flash-OFDM (orthogonal frequency multiplex access) technology is currently being pushed through the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) as a standard, which the operators can accept. It would be wrong, probably, to suggest that Qualcomm in any way controls the thinking of the IEEE, said The Register, but as an insider put it today, “they have supported the IEEE in many ways...” and many Qualcomm technical guys and gals sit on IEEE committees, and can vote one way or the other. At a time when CDMA was battling Flash-OFDM, the vote might have gone the other way. Now, the most likely result will be that Flash-OFDM will become a standard, both in the ITU and in the IEEE, and probably much faster than before the acquisition.