To: cfoe who wrote (1995 ) 9/29/1999 3:25:00 PM From: bananawind Respond to of 13582
cfoent, chaz, re W-CDMA royalties. Management has been emphatic in stating that its IPR is essential to all forms of mobile cdma, including the proposed W-CDMA. At the time of the settlement and license agreement with Ericy it was made clear that Ericy would 1)support a triple mode 3G cdma option (cdma2000, W-CDMA,and TDM) that is backward compatible to both the ANSI-41 and GSM-MAP networks in all three modes, and 2)Pay royalties to QCOM that are not dependent on which of the 3 modes above you are talking about and which are not materially different than the royalties that current IS-95 licensees now pay. Since QCOM pretty much has to offer 'fair and nondiscriminatory' license terms to everyone under ITU policy, by extension you can conclude that NEC will have a similar arrangement when it comes time for commercial production of W-CDMA products. So, the answer to one of your questions is YES. A manufacturer of subscriber equipment such as the prototype NEC W-CDMA Videophone WILL be paying royalties to QCOM. (and hopefully buying QCOM asics for it). As for the Bluetooth part, my understanding is it is a technology or set of protocalls for radio transmissions over short distances in the lower unlicensed spectrum bands. It is intended to allow the handset or other subscriber unit to communicate with a desktop computer or other device that is in the same (or maybe next) room. In the case of the NEC prototype, it allows the handset to transfer images to the little desktop camera/screen unit and vice versa. I don't think QCOM has any IPR in this space, but that's really irrelevant since Q's cdma (or W-CDMA) royalty depends on the manufacturers selling price of the device with or without bluetooth capabilities. I might add that nifty Videophones like the NEC prototype won't be cheap either! Best regards, Jim