Sprint suffered another potential setback on Monday as a court ruled that Qualcomm must negotiate a royalty rate with Broadcom in order to provide the technology necessary for Q-Chat services. In the same ruling the court required what we consider to be a high royalty requirement of 4.5% and 6.0% on two other Qualcomm patents.…
In the last quarter of 2007, Comcast’s own guidance for 2007 free cash flow went from about “flat” to down 20% through two separate guidance revisions. While lowering free cash flow guidance is not a historically “unusual” event for Comcast, we have been genuinely surprised by the speed and magnitude of the reductions in the…
We are upgrading MCCC to NEUTRAL from SELL as the stock has fallen 35% since our downgrade on October 15, 2007 and is currently 17% below our original $5.50 price target (price target has now been removed). While we believe Mediacom will continue to struggle with churn related to the Big Ten Network battle (as…
This morning one of the two Clearwire board members from Intel resigned to avoid a “conflict of interest.” The board member will be replaced by another Intel representative and the release stated that the resignation had nothing to do with any disagreements with management. We believe investors should accept this explanation as management has struck…
Warner Music was by far the most adamant about the importance of DRM over the past several years, but the collapse of the music industry in 2007 (with CD sales trailing 2006 levels by 19%) with 2008 appearing even more ominous, is causing Warner (and other labels) to rethink their digital strategy. While we applaud…
Anatel, the Brazilian telecom regulator, released wireless market share data for November. It previously reported better than expected industry growth of 1.624 million net subscriber additions versus our estimate of 865,000.
Earlier this week, Billboard/Soundscan published the top selling albums (including both physical and digital unit sales) in the US for the week ending December 16, 2007. While we have already written about the dramatic fall-off in weekly CD sales and how less than half as many albums are selling over 100,000 copies weekly versus a…
The auction for wireless spectrum in Brazil concluded this morning. Click here to see a file that details the results for each license. America Movil, Tim Part and Vivo (including Telemig, which Vivo is acquiring) all won a license in each market. They each paid $0.18 per MHz/POP for their nationwide spectrum positions. Investors should…
China Mobile reported very strong November net subscriber additions of 6.5 million (+39.7% y/y) that topped our estimate by 739,000 subscribers. This was the second strongest month of net additions in the company’s history. China Mobile reported a record 6.6 million net additions in October, which was also well above our estimate. These results imply…
The music industry’s difficulties in 2007 continue to grow, with CD sales down 25%-plus for the second straight week – with every week since Thanksgiving down 20% or more (with y-o-y growth in digital music sales slowing to their lowest levels all year, the low 30%-range). Given that the holiday season is the most important…
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