*Royalties* Steven, the 5.75% was a very solid figure from Korea who breached non-disclosure agreements on royalty levels when they were whining that royalties were so steep that they were stopping CDMA and claiming that they were being diddled on PCS royalties.
That was a bit before nearly everyone in Korea cancelled their 'wealth effect' tourist trips, stayed home and bought a cdmaOne handset during the financial calamity and depression in Korea when Q! stock was written off because people in the USA thought Korea had disappeared. Now CDMA has been totally successful and we can see that the royalty rates are actually too low. 15% would have been appropriate for such an amazing technology with such advantage over GSM.
The assumption is that other royalty agreements were about the same level over the years and that the 3G WWeb agreement would be at the same level, whether cdmaOne, cdma2000, W-CDMA [VW40], WWeb [or OFDM though perhaps OFDM will have a different royalty rate].
Since there is no 3G WWeb type product, at least for a year or three or possibly four, we can assume that Q! has not lowered their cdmaOne rate in the interim so the 3G rate must be matching the cdmaOne rate as of now.
I've never seen anything worth believing that the royalty rate for WWeb applications, cdmaOne or anything else will drop to 4%.
On checking the books, I suppose Q! has a pretty good guide as to how many handsets are produced by how many ASICs they sell to each company. They have 90% market share, so just have to check Motorola, Nokia and that's about it. Should be easy enough. For a company to 'cook the books' and enter illegal agreements with buyers of handsets to conceal 6% royalty payments seems not a good risk/reward ratio.
Apparently it is true that some royalty agreements were signed in perpetuity, meaning that after the patents expire, the agreement and royalty streams continue. Whether that applies to the Ericy agreement is another story - I have no idea. Since part of the ITU arrangements seems to be that standards and IP shall be available on fair and non-discriminatory terms, that might mean that all licensees will pay the same royalty [other than Ericy who get a kickback for selling the rest of the industry down the river so that they could get into CDMA too - Q! will pay them some silly little amount for some alleged IP of Ericy's which Q! wants].
Q! had almost agreed to 'low single figures' for royalties, but Ericy was apparently so obtuse that Q! managed to raise this to 6% or so. Talk about good negotiators - go Q! Harvesting Hagfish is easy and profitable. They have a thick, slimy hide which makes great leather when cleaned up, tanned and dyed.
Ericy has a string of pearls strategy. So they think they've bought another pearl by buying Q! infrastructure, and they have. But it is really food for them to grow lots of lovely hide for Q! to harvest. Ericy will be fat and happy and Q! will make the money.
It was interesting that Sven's comment on takeover was reported as being that Ericy staff have 'accountability and responsibility' and infrastructure would fit into that. I wondered if they have creativity, energy, excitement and that side of it too. It's like raising children, first you have to show love and the joy of life and AFTER that, when they are two years old, they have to start learning about accountability and responsibility in a social context. Well, a bit before that depending on the child. Nature is teaching them from the beginning by banging their heads if they fall over. That's why humans have fairly solid skulls - a bit of protection so the first ding doesn't see the end of us.
I bet a lot of ex-Q! employees who joined Mighty Q! for many reasons other than a job in their skill area and a good pay rate are very disappointed to find themselves swimming with hagfish. It's like working for Albert Einstein on relativity and quarkian energy emissions then being transferred to work for a French government nuclear bomb project or being designated as Frogman to blow up the Rainbow Warrior.
The six month agreement with Ericy, 'we won't employe ex-Q! people who resign from Ericy' is pretty tough. Still, it's a lot better than the more usual 2 year agreement for 'non-competition' [well, it used to be more usual as far as I knew]. I bet there are a lot of people reapplying to join Q! after 6 months. They can just coast for that time, take a vacation or just resign and have a holiday for a few months. Maybe do a bit of study or something they've always wanted to do. They'll have some severance pay and profitable options to cash in. They've done okay.
Mqurice
@873
PS: I wonder what Jon meant when he said he doesn't read everything now...surely not...:-[ |
