disgruntled where Europe is concerned.
I am sorry if I offended anyone. I did not realize that some people would be so sensitive. But talk about making a mountain out of a mole hill!
I guess it just urks me that the Europeans are so protective of their crummy, and technoilogicaly inferior, ecconomic base, and legislate like crazy to prevent foreign competition (read that as UNITED STATES companies) from marketing their products in Europe
I am a very large shareholder in Qualcomm. Although the GSM cell phone standard (which is a basturdized, Europeanized version of TDMA) has been king of the hill in most areas of the world, Qualcomm has trumpted the Euros with it's technologicaly superior CDMA technology. The Europeans can see their stranglehold on the world with GSM, slipping away and they don't like it.
The Euros knew that CDMA would take over cell phone technology eventually and that Qualcomm would basically be king of the hill some day. So in order to thwart our superior American technology, The Euros cobbled together yet another basterdized standard of their own, they call it WCDMA. Basically they added a bunch of unneeded intelectual property of their own to Qualcomm's CDMA core technology. You could liken it to adding the hub caps and a radio to what was already a car. You don't need the hubcaps and radio, because the car will perform just as well without. They did this to hopefully, prevent Qualcomm from collecting royalties on their intelectual property for the CDMA patents needed to make WCDMA work.
Anyhow now that WCDMA is starting to erode the GSM stronghold (and that the old GSM cabal in Euroland is now going to have to pay an American company for the use of the CDMA IP which is the core of WCDMA), the Euros are trying to fight back and are using the European Union to try and legslate against Qualcomm, saying that Qualcomm charges too much.
The Euros knew what the price was for Qualcomms CDMA technology up front, (about 5%) and all of them signed contracts to pay Qualcomm it's standard royalty rate. (over 130 companies worldwide willingly pay the same percentage to use CDMA)
But now the Euros don't want to pay Qualcomm. They say the royalty rate of 5% is to high. When in fact the Euros were charging more than 15% for the IP contained in GSM, to anyone that was not in the little group of Euros that concockted it.
Qualcomm will be mired in legal suits for the next several years while the Euros try to screw my company. As a result my holdings in Qualcomm have been under pressure, and have, and will continue to, underperform the market, as a result of this uncalled for attack by the Euros. Qualcomm will spend over 200 million dollars this year alone to fight this attack. Money that belongs in the pockets of the shareholders.
I am not saying that all Europeans dislike Americans, however it is a well known fact the the French are at the top of the list of those that are not friendly to America.
Members of my family fought in the European theater in WWII, and my uncle Ray died for their freedom. If it were not for our sacrifices during WWII everyone in Europe would be goose stepping to Adolph and his henchmen. How quickly they have forgotten which side their bread is buttered on.
So now you can kick me out of Audio Karma if you want, for offending your sensibilities.
Sorry for not being politically correct. But by the time you get to be as old as I am, and you've been craped on as much as I have, you get to the point where being politically correct is no longer of any importance to you.
BTW, follow this link and educate yourselves about the origin of the term "frog" in reference to the French people.
http://allaboutfrogs.org/weird/general/frenchfrogs.html