*On topic* - so let's focus on Nokia's 3G strategy. It's based on W-CDMA, a standard proposal created by Nokia and Ericsson, voted by ETSI to become the third-generation successor to GSM and later adopted by NTT-Docomo in a bid to harmonize the European and Asian markets. This has led to a situation where the leading operators in Europe, Japan, Korea and China are now doing W-CDMA trials and seem intent on launching the commercial services between 2001-2002. Qualcomm has patents relevant to W-CDMA - nice, but not necessarily a cigar. Companies actually locking in the specs, doing the development work, cooperating with operators who buy this stuff, etc. seem most interesting to me.
Why? Because there never has been a company that has built a succesful, long-term business purely on IPR. Patents get circumvented, new technologies develop - ultimately IPR is most useful when you can actually use it for something. Sitting back collecting checks and spinning out failing business divisions doesn't seem like a brilliant long-term strategy. But who knows? It might be the next hot trend.
We can argue until the cows come home what the IPR situation is, who gets licensing fees and how much. But the fact is - nobody knows the precise numbers at this stage. If bux or somebody else has found information detailing the agreed W-CDMA licensing fees to companies holding intellectual property - post it here. Just the facts. That would be a big help - because most industry people confess they have no idea what the final agreement will look like.
Tero
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