Really!!! We got here because there was no other course? That we could have done nothing differently to avoid where we are today?? That this was inevitable? Okay. That makes sense!!
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SCL Minion : I used to work in CR&D, I think it is the inhouse talent that is the root of the problem. (esp in fields outside our core area of expertise). Q needs to bring in the outside experts/academics to run the show.
I also think, they really dont know how to commercialize some of the technology that gets developed.. One example would be indoor navigation.. I would have thought this would be have great market potential, Don't know why it is not taking off. (No, I did not work there, and have no connection to it.. just see the market potential)
It seems that QCOM is lately always using the shotgun approach, hire lots of mediocre engineers (h1-b) to try to kick-start new business opportunities into a lot of areas, or acquire other companies sometimes on the ropes, rather than use the current in-house core talent to team together to focus our core-competency into select win-able business areas. We need upper management to renew our focus and passion as Irwin did in the early days to invent the future for our company!! Without a champion, perhaps we are lost and will fade into history?
Everybody will soon have a personal swarm of drone bees at their disposal. Flying around, making ad hoc networks, defending against police brutality, and tweeting all day. It's gonna be bigger than cdma
"The problem with QCT management is we only focus on chipsets for Cell Phones and we never look anywhere else for growth, we should look at Bio tech long time ago, car batteries, new solar technologies etc no only stupid chips for phones". Not true, although they have had their flops, there have been plenty of efforts (MediaFLO, QLife, TOQ, Telematics, BREW, Digital Cinema...). They have tried to leverage the technical skills of QCOM to various efforts, but so far, haven't been able to find anything of the revenue/profit potential of QCT(back in its hay day)/QTL. In their defense, its a very hard thing to do. CDMA and its derivatives may have been a once in a lifetime opportunity (with the confluence of smart phones, mobile internet, app economy) and there is no way the industry will let itself get scooped again, unless you come up with something mind blowing, which is always possible, but unlikely. OTOH, I agree with the sentiment of the point, its just a damn shame that for all the Billions invested in other efforts, nothing much has panned out. Someone has to take the blame.
Anonymous139206 : I believe management has looked at some of these things before, but I doubt they have the balls and vision to place big bets, invest money, and move the marketplace, which is what would be required. Kind of like what IJ did to kick start CDMA, or what google is currently doing..
The problem with QCT management is we only focus on chipsets for Cell Phones and we never look anywhere else for growth, we should look at Bio tech long time ago, car batteries, new solar technologies etc no only stupid chips for phones...
"Anonymous139167" : yep, and with predictable results.. (and these were all examples from a insular management team)
there are some companies though that have reinvented themselves many times over, which where there were truly good management teams: for instance IBM, or Oracle.. For a company of QCOM's market cap, we definitely can/should expect more our management, they are being paid a lot more than those failure examples you quoted anyway
Famous quotes from some ex-execs in other companies: "Consumes don't like flip phones so we won't make one." "Consumes don't like touch screen phones; a phone needs to have buttons." Exec vision slip-ups happen in every company.
Agree with other posters here.. Would have been obvious that smart phone growth was bound to slow down, and that they cant churn out chips that fast.. They probably cannibalized their own ROI, by churning chips out that fast and pushing the market that fast.
They should have been looking for another growth driver for a few years now, and I think management has been way too cautious, and not buying enough companies,and are only waking up to it now, after the damage is done. It is also weird that they keep the same failing leadership in CR&D, when there track record for innovation has been very poor for many years now..
Also both PJ and SM, and good portion of the exec team, grew up inside the QCOM cocoon, and in San Diego.. I suspect that they might not have gotten a well rounded experience, advisers, social circle that say a Exec in the Bay Area would have had.
Who could have seen the commoditization of wireless chips where it would be required to compete on price instead of features where the low cost structure companies would be the most profitable? I find it hard to believe that this was unavoidable and that no one saw it coming. On the QCT side the business was running fat and while the chips with the new features were selling and the competition was not catching up this was fine as there was not a lot of pricing pressure. Mediatek was always nipping on the low end but they were moving up the chain. Also all the pet projects that were not fruitful (mirasol, FLO, etc...) The cost structure was out of whack with the new environment of competing on price. So for a long winded answer, the management could have set the company up better to adapt to the change in the environment. Of course the fat pay packages in light of all this didn't help that coupled with having to pay consultants to come in to tell the company what to do. Is that the job of the CEO to come up with strategy? Consultants are often used is a independent 3rd party to make tough decisions so the management doesn't have to take full responsibility.
Who could predict that those fine,upstanding Chinese companies would underreport or even decline to pay license fees? How could a tiny marketing team of only 1000 heads predict that Arm would make it possible for any halfway decent chip team to produce multi-core multi-cluster 64bit?
Would another team have seen 64 bit coming? Apparently "nobody saw it coming".
Well, then I think this has a lot to say about Qualcomm of today versus Qualcomm of the past. The best days are long gone..It's like every other big bureacratic company. Innovation/growth isn't going to be happening the same way at the Q as it did in the past. Not when leadership is focusing more on fattening executive comps versus trying to actually innovate
Classic case of cronyism and creating an executive board that doesn't challenge anything the execs want. "I want a fat retention package." YES. "I want one too!" YES. "We need to bring in Jana's buddies onto the Board, even though Jana has a small number of shares." YES. "Let's slash costs, prop up the share price and make the company an awful place to work for the employees." YES.
Maybe current management team has following arguments: it's a very competitive and complex business, they may not know how long they will be in charge considering where this Titanic is heading so they might as well take the most they can.
The proble with Q isn't so much the business climate...It's the message that management is sending. On one hand, business is running lean, they are telling employees they need to cut cost, they need to move work abroad to cut labor, they need to cut benefits...because the business is not looking as good....On the other hand, they are handing out executive bonuses up the ying-yang, despite a pathetic performance. It's so ridiculous that even active investors think it's ridiculous. This isn't about shareholder value...This is about fattening executive compensation.