Ramsey:
Thanks for reminding me of that GSM patent paper you linked, I have it "filed" but had forgotten about it.
Lots of interesting background and discussion in it on how the Euros managed to keep non-Euros (except Motorola) out of the GSM licensing stream cash flow cow, but this is the one bit I was reminded of (page 12):
...Our own research has indicated that the cumulative fee paid for GSM handset license is very high, and this was recently confirmed by the act[ing] director of ETNO [European public Telecommunications Network Operators' association], who revealed that royalty fees make up to 29% of the costs of a GSM handset. Such prices make competing very difficult for those companies that are not participating in the cross-license fees...
Maybe people (like Nokia) who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones....
I also recall there were some posts of articles around this time last year (that I haven't tried to dig up, maybe someone with a decent indexing system to historical posts could find them) discussing the fact that total license fees for WCDMA handsets could be as high as around 35% when they're all added up.
In comparison, Qualcomm's 4.5% or so on handsets is a miserly royalty rate, and the Koreans and other CDMA handset manufacturers should be thankful for that.
And as for NOK owning 25% of the "essential" IPR for WCDMA, much of the IPR they do own apparently has little to do with the QCOM patents essential to CDMA/WCDMA, as this table shows:
Table 1 - Subsequent Art Citation Frequency for Select Companies for Five Early Qualcomm Patents
Number of Patents
Qualcomm
Patent ERICY Omnipoint NOK InterDigital MOT QCOM
4,901,307 17 56 5 36 24 80
5,103,459 10 46 9 33 36 72
5,101,501 8 51 5 28 38 62
5,109,390 10 53 10 32 41 44
5,056,109 31 50 6 30 25 59
Total 76 256 35 159 164 317
From:
m-cam.com
David T. |
