BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : JANUARY 10, 2000 ISSUE
COVER STORY Qualcomm's Wizard KEY ACCOMPLISHMENTS Shares up roughly 1,900% in '99 Profits up 85%, to roughly $200 million Developed digital technology that was adopted in 1999 as a global standard for next-generation wireless cell phones If anyone deserves a millennial toast, it's IRWIN M. JACOBS, founder and chief executive of wireless technology company Qualcomm (QCOM). A decade ago, skeptics dismissed his plan to commercialize a new and powerful, yet technically complex, digital wireless technology. Now, Jacobs, a 66-year-old former Massachusetts Institute of Technology engineering professor, is having the last laugh. Thanks to a patent agreement, Jacobs' technology is set to be in the guts of tens of millions of phones for years to come. That's one big reason why Qualcomm's stock--which went from $25 to about $520--was the best performer in the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index for the year. Jacobs has been in business since 1968, when he started a company to develop advanced military communications. He founded Qualcomm in 1985 and has been relentlessly pushing his digital technology ever since. Fast-talking and articulate, Jacobs has made ''some of the greatest signal-processing breakthroughs of the century,'' says Dwight Decker, chairman and CEO of rival chip-design house Conexant Systems. Decker adds that Jacobs is also ''a PR wizard.'' Qualcomm's technology is already used in about 50% of new digital handsets sold in the U.S. Big carriers using it include such heavy-hitters as Sprint and Airtouch. Now, Qualcomm's prospects are better than ever. In 1999, Jacobs won a critical legal standoff with Swedish phonemaker Ericsson. The agreement paves the way for Qualcomm to receive fat royalties from European equipment makers--the leading players in the global telecom market. Why? Because Qualcomm's technology has been adopted as one of three new standards by the International Telecommunications Union for a new generation of digital wireless phones. Qualcomm shares also got a boost when Jacobs shed phone-manufacturing operations to concentrate on high-margin design and research. His 3.7% stake in Qualcomm is now worth about $2.7 billion. Even so, Jacobs and his wife, Joan, still live in the same modest ranch house they bought in 1966, when Jacobs was a professor. After the kind of year he has had, the Jacobs family can well afford to splurge on a new house--or just about anything else they want. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP					RELATED ITEMS INTRODUCTION MANAGERS TO WATCH THE TOP ENTREPRENEURS THE TOP 25 MANAGERS Minuro Arakawa Bernard Arnault Arthur Blank Peter Bijur Gordon Binder Steve Case John Chambers James Curvey Thierry Desmarest Bernie Ebbers Tom Engibous Chris Gent Irwin Jacobs Steve Jobs Mel Karmazin James Kelly Timothy Koogle Ken Lay Jenny Ming Thomas Siebel Masayoshi Son Martha Stewart Keiji Tachikawa Jack Welch Yun Jong Yong ONLINE EXTRAS TO BUSINESS WEEK INVESTOR INTERACT E-Mail to Business Week Online

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