QUALCOMM Announces Succession Plan
March 8, 2005 / By Doug Ramsey
[Following is a news release from QUALCOMM Inc., a founding Calit2 industry partner. Dr. Paul Jacobs is also the chair of the UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering's Council of Advisors. The company will offer live streaming video of the news conference following QUALCOMM's Annual Meeting, at 1 p.m. PT. To watch the webcast, click here to register. Real or Windows Media player required.]
QUALCOMM Names Dr. Paul Jacobs as CEO and Steven Altman as President
Dr. Irwin Jacobs to Remain Chairman; Tony Thornley to Retire; Changes Effective July 1, 2005
San Diego, CA, March 8, 2005 -- QUALCOMM Incorporated (Nasdaq: QCOM) today will announce at its annual stockholders' meeting that its board of directors has unanimously approved a succession plan for executive management of the Company. Effective July 1, 2005, Dr. Paul E. Jacobs will be promoted to chief executive officer of the Company and Steven R. Altman will be promoted to president of the Company. At that time, Dr. Irwin Mark Jacobs, the current CEO and chairman of the board, will relinquish his position as CEO but remain chairman, and Tony Thornley, the current president of the Company, will retire.
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Marc Stern, member of QUALCOMM's board of directors and chair of the Governance Committee said, “QUALCOMM's board of directors is responsible for ensuring the continuity of senior management leadership. We are pleased with the quality and depth of management and technical talent at all levels of the Company. The succession plan we are announcing today enables a smooth transition to a capable and proven management team while providing for ongoing contributions from QUALCOMM's founder and chairman of the board. QUALCOMM's board of directors unanimously approved the election of Dr. Paul E. Jacobs as CEO and Steven R. Altman as president and has the highest degree of confidence that they, together with the accomplished management team, will further expand QUALCOMM's impressive record of innovation and shareholder return.”
In his role as chairman, Dr. Irwin Jacobs (71) will remain an employee of the Company and will help guide its future strategies and direction. “I am very proud of QUALCOMM's accomplishments achieved with the exceptional team we have attracted since forming the Company, and I am especially excited by what is yet to come,” said Dr. Irwin Jacobs. “As we approach the 20th anniversary of QUALCOMM's founding, I believe it is the right time to transition my CEO responsibilities, although I will stay actively involved with QUALCOMM as chairman. Paul and Steve have been a critical part of the executive team for many years now, and the Company has benefited greatly from their creativity, vision, dedication and focus. I have the utmost confidence in their ability, supported strongly by our deep management team, to drive technical and business innovations, ensuring the growth and future of QUALCOMM.”
In addition to assuming the role of CEO, Dr. Paul Jacobs (42) will be named a member of QUALCOMM's board of directors, effective July 1, 2005. “I am honored to be chosen by the board to lead QUALCOMM into its third decade, working closely with Steve and the rest of our very talented management team,” said Dr. Paul Jacobs. “QUALCOMM's continuing focus on execution in product and technology development is enabling the global transition to 3G CDMA, opening new markets and creating opportunities for the entire wireless industry. Together, QUALCOMM and our partners will fulfill the vision of a wireless phone that is not only for voice communications, but also is an indispensable personal device for entertainment, computing and information access.”
QUALCOMM also today announced that Tony Thornley (58), Company president, will retire on July 1, 2005. “I am very proud to have been part of the QUALCOMM leadership team over the past 11 years and especially for the past three years as president,” said Mr. Thornley. “I am confident that this new management team has the leadership skills and knowledge to keep QUALCOMM in the forefront of wireless telecommunications, as well as continue to give outstanding returns to shareholders.”
Dr. Paul Jacobs noted, “It has been personally rewarding for me to work closely with Tony over many critical years, benefiting greatly from his management skills, financial acumen and strategic guidance. I thank him for his many contributions to QUALCOMM's success and look forward to the opportunity to call on him for advice in the future.”
Steven Altman (43), who will assume the role of president, said, “It has been a privilege, as well as an education, to have worked closely with Irwin and Tony during the last 15 years. Our CDMA expertise and broad intellectual property portfolio combined with our ability to execute and rapidly bring new technologies to market have helped make QUALCOMM a recognized leader in wireless telecommunications. Our plan is straightforward — we will continue to build upon our unique CDMA expertise and market position to help enable the success of our customers and the wireless industry as a whole.”
The Governance Committee of the board of directors began the succession planning effort nearly three years ago in the Spring of 2002. The committee believed the ideal structure was one in which Dr. Irwin Jacobs could remain engaged and influential in QUALCOMM's future, while enabling his successor to lead effectively. The committee concluded that the Company would be served best by the elevation of Dr. Paul Jacobs and Steven Altman to these new roles and made this recommendation to the board. The board agreed and voted unanimously on March 7, 2005 to accept the recommendation of the Governance Committee.
Dr. Paul Jacobs has been the primary driver of QUALCOMM's focus on enabling wireless data. He has held numerous engineering and management positions since joining the Company fulltime in 1990. Dr. Jacobs' early work focused on the speech compression techniques that became CDMA's initial differentiating consumer feature. In 1995, he was appointed to run the handset and integrated circuit division, which was subsequently divided into QUALCOMM Consumer Products (QCP) and QUALCOMM CDMA Technologies, respectively. Important developments which began under Dr. Jacobs in QCP include the first Palm OS®-based smartphone, the Company's initiative to include global positioning system (GPS) capabilities in cellphones and the initial work on the BREW® environment. Dr. Jacobs expanded this latter idea into the overall concept for the BREW system, which included dynamic downloading of applications with security checks for digital signatures, and the business ecosystem that enables BREW developers to engage operators globally and receive payment. He was an early proponent of embedding TCP/IP in CDMA phones and worked with operators and industry partners to develop technology which allowed CDMA devices to directly connect to the Internet. Dr. Jacobs first conceived of deploying voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) as the basis for push-to-talk capabilities over CDMA networks, which became QChat™, and he developed many of the technical concepts and business strategy for the MediaFLO system. Dr. Jacobs holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of California at Berkeley.
Steven Altman joined QUALCOMM in 1989 and has served as executive vice president, general counsel and president of QUALCOMM Technology Licensing. He has been the chief architect of the Company's strategy for leveraging its broad intellectual property portfolio. Under his leadership, the Company has entered into more than 125 licensing agreements with the world's largest telecommunications and electronics companies. Altman negotiated QUALCOMM's agreement with South Korea's Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute in 1993 that established CDMA as the basis for South Korea's single nationwide wireless standard, which in turn enabled South Korea to build a major wireless products export economy. In 1999, he negotiated the agreement with Ericsson, which ended litigation between the two companies. With that agreement, Ericsson licensed essential CDMA patents from QUALCOMM and purchased its infrastructure business. In 1999-2002, Altman worked with WCDMA equipment providers globally to extend existing agreements to include WCDMA, and now every major manufacturer of 3G CDMA products and equipment is a QUALCOMM licensee, including approximately 60 manufacturers with licenses covering WCDMA/TD-SCDMA. Altman received his Juris Doctor from the University of San Diego School of Law.
Dr. Paul Jacobs and Steven Altman will continue to benefit from the assistance of the Company's talented management team. Dr. Sanjay Jha, president of QUALCOMM CDMA Technologies, has served the Company for more than 10 years and will continue to provide strong technical and business leadership to the Company's semiconductor division, as well as undertaking an expanded role in corporate strategic matters. William Keitel, chief financial officer, has served the Company for more than eight years and was appointed to his current position in February 2002. He will continue to lead a strong financial team, working closely with all of the business units and with the board of directors' Audit Committee. Dr. Roberto Padovani, chief technical officer, and Franklin Antonio, chief scientist, will continue to lead the corporate research and development activities. Jeff Jacobs, president of global development for QUALCOMM, will continue to direct the Company's expanding worldwide business development activities. Dr. Daniel Sullivan will continue to guide the human resource activities that have gained QUALCOMM so much recognition and a growing workforce of the most capable people in the industry with very low turnover.
QUALCOMM Incorporated (www.qualcomm.com ) is a leader in developing and delivering innovative digital wireless communications products and services based on the Company's CDMA digital technology. Headquartered in San Diego, Calif., QUALCOMM is included in the S&P 500 Index and is a 2004 FORTUNE 500® company traded on The Nasdaq Stock Market® under the ticker symbol QCOM.
Except for the historical information contained herein, this news release contains forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties, including the Company's ability to successfully design and have manufactured significant quantities of CDMA components on a timely and profitable basis, the extent and speed to which CDMA is deployed, change in economic conditions of the various markets the Company serves, as well as the other risks detailed from time to time in the Company's SEC reports, including the report on Form 10-K for the year ended September 26, 2004, and most recent Form 10-Q.
Succession Q & A http://www.qualcomm.com/press/press_succession_qa.html
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QUALCOMM and BREW are registered trademarks of QUALCOMM Incorporated. QChat is a trademark of QUALCOMM Incorporated. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
QUALCOMM Contacts:
Christine Trimble, Corporate Communications
Phone: 1-858-651-3628
Email: publicrelations@qualcomm.com
or
Bill Davidson, Investor Relations
Phone: 1-858-658-4813
Email: ir@qualcomm.com
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