Roger McNamee Says the Consumer Tech Will Remain King in 2003

6. Which companies will benefit in this environment?

I think cell phone guys will have more data business in spite of themselves. It's probably going to be a lot easier to do on the Sprint(FON Quote) network and Nextel(NXTL Quote) network than it is on anybody else's because they have unified technology across the country. I think guys like Verizon(VZ Quote) and AT&T(T Quote) are going to have a really hard time. The billing alone will just bury them. But guess what? They're going to be forced competitively to do something.

We're going to learn a lot of hard lessons over the next 12 months. Being a wireless carrier means you'll be faced with opportunities, almost all of which will have danger embedded.

The in-effect beneficiaries will be semiconductor vendors -- the Linear Technologies(LLTC Quote) of the world who sell into that market and sell to everybody. I suspect it will be a better year for a couple of the really big equipment guys, but that's a lot harder to predict. I'm not sure which things are going to be successful.

In other words, 2003 will be a really good year to be a consumer in the wireless world, but I don't think it's clear it's going to be that great a year for a vendor.

7. Another consumer-tech company you've held for awhile is Overture. It's among your top 10 holdings, right? What do you like about Overture and what do you make about the concerns over competition from Google?

We own a huge position in Overture Services(OVER Quote) -- it's probably our No. 2 holding after Seagate, which we held privately. We were also venture investors in Overture.

When we made that venture investment, everybody was convinced you couldn't make money in portals. Now look: The two most profitable Internet companies are Google and Overture, both portals! (Laughs.)

This highlights one of the key rules in investing in technology: Always ask the question, is there anything right now that people believe in religiously? If there is, you ought to go back and ask, is there any way they can be wrong?