Atheros -> Qualcomm

[stevech]

I wonder what'll happen assuming this is going down in March, per the rags.

here where I live, we're in the shadow of Qualcomm's empire. Since they sold hardware biz to Kyocera, we locals think of Qualcomm as an army of intellectual property patent troll lawyers.

 

[thiggins]

Qualcomm absorbed Airgo, never to be seen again. Very doubtful that will happen with Atheros. They paid too much to simply break up the company and absorb the IP.

With CDMA dying, Qualcomm needs other sources of revenue and Atheros can do that.

 

[stevech]

Qualcomm legal army did manage to get a good set of patent claims in the LTE world. Don't know if that will offset the decline they get from IS95B/3G. Verizon M2M people I work with say that their IS95 (3G), with 1X and EV-DO will stay on the air for many years. Not sure how this translates to revenue for Qualcomm though.

W.r.t. Atheros, Qualcomm gets no significant patent claims to use as they have with CDMA and turbocodes, to hold hostage the carriers using the technology. The 802.11 standard, being open, leaves only insignificant proprietary additions to the chipsets that don't break interoperability. E.g., Cisco's quasi-standard enhancements such as beacon-based handoffs, require Cisco Compatible software/firmware on infrastructure as well as client devices.

So I can't see Atheros bringing Qualcomm boatloads of profit from the WiFi market products. Lots and lots of low margin revenue though, and that's today's common Wall Street game.