| At
Hong Kong in Telecom World 2006 conference, Chief Executive
Paul Jacobs of Qualcomm said, ”Clearly, if Nokia is shipping
products using our intellectual property and not paying royalties,
then we will take steps to protect our interest.”
Qualcomm gave a clear sign of how serious
they are about royalties issue with Nokia. Jecobs said, ”Any
talk of us lowering royalties really is speculation at this
point.”
Matsushita Electric Industrial, Nokia,
Broadcom, NEC and Texas Instruments also complain that Qualcomm’s
fees are higher than the agreed-upon standard of ”fair,
reasonable and nondiscriminatory.”
Nokia cannot work around the Qualcomm patents,
which are key factor to several of its target growth businesses,
related with CDMA and 3G W-CDMA handsets. Qualcomm sells technology
licenses and chips based on CDMA-- the dominant standard for
U.S. cell phones--as well as those for GSM, the world’s
most widely used cell phone technology.
In April 2006, Qualcomm has warned, that
there is no guarantee it will come to agreement with Nokia
over its CDMA patents licensing deal.
Nokia wants to step up the pressure on
the US company to agree to a cap on royalties in 3G cell-phones,
whose costs are kept artificially high by the levels of license
payments. Nokia cannot live without the patents, nor challenge
them, and Qualcomm would not easily lose the business of the
world’s largest phone maker. |
