From SI Moderated post # 12456
The new battle; We don't want anyone getting bored!
"Siemens has ``a different interpretation'' from Qualcomm, Pauly said"
Siemens Says It Will Not Pay Qualcomm for China Mobile Standard
By Michael Forsythe
Beijing, July 4 (Bloomberg) -- Siemens AG said a standard for advanced cellular phone services that Germany's
biggest maker of consumer electronics developed in China is not based on Qualcomm Inc.'s technology, as the
latter claims.
Siemens should not have to pay a fee to the San Diego, California-based company for using a standard known as
time division synchronous code division multiple access, or TD-SCDMA, said Lothar Pauly, the head of Siemens'
mobile phone division.
``We are struggling with Qualcomm,'' Pauly said. ``The Qualcomm patents are not applicable, according to our
judgment, to TD-SCDMA.''
Siemen's position means that Qualcomm may lose out on fees for a standard that may become dominant in a nation
set to overtake the U.S. as the biggest mobile phone market this month. More than 40 million people will use
TD-SCDMA phones in China by 2005, Siemens estimates.
Pauly's statement also contradicts Qualcomm Chief Executive Irwin Jacob's comments in Beijing yesterday that his
company would benefit from the deployment of TD-SCDMA, widely viewed as the standard most likely to win the
Chinese government's approval when it decides next year on standards for services allowing faster transmissions of
data via mobile devices.
Royalty
Yesterday, Nokia Oyj, the biggest mobile-phone maker, agreed to pay Qualcomm royalties on phones that will use
its CDMA technology to send and receive data.
``Qualcomm's entire business model is founded on licensing,'' said Duncan Clark, a Beijing-based
telecommunications consultant. ``There have been a lot of jibes at Qualcomm from the European vendors but I've
never seen it as a direct public spat.''
For its part, Qualcomm has said that it expects to receive royalties from all advanced mobile phone standards
based on CDMA, including wideband-CDMA, promoted by firms such as Ericsson AB, and CDMA2000,
promoted by Qualcomm itself and used by some operators in Korea now.
Whichever standard is chosen in future, ``that would from a royalty point of view benefit us equally,'' Jacobs said
yesterday to reporters.
Siemens has ``a different interpretation'' from Qualcomm, Pauly said.
Other Markets
China is not the only place Siemens is looking at to deploy TD-SCDMA, a standard it created jointly with the
China Academy of Telecommunications Technology, a Chinese government think-tank. Pauly says his company is
in talks with a Canadian telecommunications operator to use the system in North America and is also looking at
Western Europe and the southeast Asian nations of Thailand and Indonesia.
Siemens and CATT officials demonstrated TD-SCDMA's video transmission capabilities for the media today in
Beijing. Siemens expects the standard to be ready for commercial use by the end of 2002 and is pushing China
Mobile Ltd. and China Unicom Ltd., the nation's two biggest mobile phone operators, as well as Chinese
manufacturers such as Datang Telecom Technology Co. to adapt the technology.
China will probably choose more than one technology for advanced mobile-phone services when the Ministry of
Information Industry decides next year. TD-SCDMA will be given special consideration, MII officials said.
``We will give all three standards the opportunity to be tested and run in China, once we conclude the planning,''
said Zhang Xinsheng, the MII's deputy minister for science and technology. ``Of course, we will give preferential
treatment to our own technique.''
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So, now Siemen's steps in with the "we avoid Qcom's patents"....
Sharon Koplik |
