Steven R. Altman is president of QUALCOMM Incorporated. Most recently Altman has been executive vice president of QUALCOMM and president of QUALCOMM Technology Licensing (QTL). QTL under Altman has grown to $1.33 billion in revenues in QUALCOMM's Fiscal 2004. He has been a member of QUALCOMM's executive committee since 1992.
Altman joined QUALCOMM in 1989 and is the chief architect of the Company's strategy for leveraging its broad intellectual property portfolio into a value chain which has accelerated the growth of CDMA technology. In this role he has been responsible for structuring and negotiating QUALCOMM's license agreements joint ventures and strategic relationships. Under Altman's leadership the Company has entered into more than 130 domestic and international licensing agreements with many of the world's largest telecommunications and electronics companies including Alcatel Ericsson Huawei Hyundai LG Lucent Matsushita Mitsubishi Motorola NEC Nokia Nortel Samsung Siemens and Sony.
Altman has played a pivotal role in driving QUALCOMM's business strategies as a member of the Company's executive committee. He negotiated QUALCOMM's agreement with South Korea's Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) in 1993 that established CDMA as the basis for South Korea's single nationwide wireless technology standard which in turn enabled South Korea to build a major wireless products export economy based on CDMA devices and infrastructure. In 1994 he drove the joint venture and marketing agreement between Sony and QUALCOMM resulting in the creation of QUALCOMM Consumer Products and subsequently the introduction of the first CDMA digital handsets. In 1999 he negotiated the agreement with Ericsson which ended litigation between the two companies and resulted in Ericsson's licensing of essential CDMA patents from QUALCOMM and its purchase of QUALCOMM's infrastructure business. Also in 1999 he oversaw the negotiation of the sale of QUALCOMM's handset business to Kyocera Wireless as well as the Framework Agreement with China Unicom in 2000 which established the basis for licensing QUALCOMM intellectual property to Chinese manufacturers. Also in 2000 he led QUALCOMM's $1 billion acquisition of SnapTrack which resulted in accelerated commercialization of advanced GPS services in wireless handsets and was a cornerstone in QUALCOMM's Launchpad strategy. |