Battle brews for Internet-linked mobile phones
By Paul de Bendern
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - A global battle in the mobile phone market loomed Friday as Swedish telecoms equipment maker Ericsson said it would retaliate if U.S.
high-tech company Qualcomm Inc (QCOM - news) did not license key technologies to European rivals.
''If Qualcomm does not license us or the industry for whatever reason they claim, that will according to our statement mean we will not license them either,'' Ake
Persson, vice-president for marketing and sales at Ericsson Mobile Systems, told Reuters.
Ericsson's comments raised the stakes in a dispute between European and U.S. companies over standardization in the telecoms market, as it expands to include data
exchange and Internet access.
Qualcomm has written to the International Telecommunications Union, or ITU, the global telecom body, saying it would not grant patent rights to companies using a
European-backed standard to develop wireless communications products.
The European Union has been promoting efforts to set up a common standard for the new products that would mimic the success of Europe's existing GSM mobile
phone standard.
This new standard, the wide band W-CDMA, draws heavily on a technology pioneered by Qualcomm known as CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access), but
Qualcomm says it would not be compatible with the competing standard that it supports-CDMA 2000.
Besides Qualcomm, there are two other big equipment manufacturers in the United States -- Motorola and Lucent Technologies, both co-authors of CDMA 2000.
But European companies such as Ericsson, Nokia, Siemens AG and Alcatel, which use GSM, favor the W-CDMA standard.
U.S. officials have expressed concern that the EU, by backing a common European standard, will exclude competing technologies.
Ericsson said it would take the ITU, a United Nations agency, another 12-14 months to decide the issue.
''So there is still time to resolve whatever issues there might be needed to resolve,'' Persson said.
But he said W-CDMA was the right standard to use.
''We're actually developing the standards of the products the market is asking us to do... Wide band CDMA is being supported by...85 percent of operators worldwide.''
It was unreasonable for 85 percent of the world's operator community to accept another less capable standard to accommodate a single company, Persson said.
''This is just another cry from Qualcomm,'' he said. ''We're definitely sure this will not harm us.''
The W-CDMA standard has been endorsed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) -- a body composed mostly of industry representatives that
draws up standards for the European market.
If Qualcomm convinced the ETSI to reduce the performance capability of the wide band standard, then Ericsson would accept and provide that standard, Persson said.
(Reuters/Wired) |
