Qualcomm chief meets Anil twice
Nivedita Mookerji
Thursday, December 14, 2006 23:47 IST
Email Article Print Article
Most Emailed Articles RSS Feed
Most Viewed Articles Search This Site
NEW DELHI: Qualcomm chief executive officer Paul E Jacobs, who was in the country till late on Thursday, met Reliance Communications chairman Anil Ambani quite a few times during his visit.
“I saw him twice today,” Jacobs told DNA Money after a press conference here on Thursday evening.
Jacobs had another meeting planned with Ambani later in the evening. “We continue our dialogue,” Jacobs said.
On whether the dialogue between the US-based CDMA phone chip-maker Qualcomm and India’s largest CDMA player Reliance Communications mainly revolved around the “high” royalty fee, that has been a bone of contention for long, Jacobs said, “the talks are mostly on other issues”.
So, is Reliance Communications finally satisfied with the royalty that Qualcomm is charging? Jacobs said, “Ultimately everyone understands that it is the handset price that matters”, referring to the low-cost CDMA handsets that are entering India of late -- the sub-$30 ones.
On whether it was a major concern for Qualcomm that Reliance was planning to float a mega tender for GSM, Jacobs only said, “We are in dialogue.”
However, Jacobs clarified that Reliance Communications plans to use both technologies -CDMA as well as GSM, thereby dismissing the buzz that it was planning a complete switchover to GSM technology. During his previous visit, Jacobs had said that Qualcomm was entering manufacturing tie-ups with Indian companies.
Subsequently, Qualcomm had announced a tieup with Himachal Futuristic Communications Ltd (HFCL) for the same. Qualcomm plans to enter several other partnerships in the area of manufacturing handsets
dnaindia.com |
