The Once and Future Qualcomm

摘要

In 2001, qualcomm inc. exec-utive Paul E. Jacobs was speaking at an Internet conference when he surprised his audience by showing a slide that summed up bis vision of the future of Net technology. "Wireless Internet > Wired Inter-net," it said. His point: Someday, people will use cell phones and laptops to surf the Web more than they use desktop computers. The audience of dot-corn bigwigs erupted in laughter. Paul was undeterred. "When people reacted with disbelief, I just kept trying to convince them," he says. Paul wasn't the first member of the Jacobs family to nearly get laughed off the stage. In the late 1980s, his father, Qualcomm CEO Irwin M.Jacobs, developed a digital technology called CDMA for mobile communications, promoting it as a better way of delivering voice and data over wireless networks. Many in the eel-Mar industry thought he was over-promising, and Wall Street analysts vili-fied him for hyping Qualcomm's stock.