Qualcomm's woes

Followers of the telecommunications industry will know that US company Qualcomm tends to go it alone in setting royalty rates for patents considered essential to standards. Qualcomm considers the licensing fees set to be "Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory" (the mythical FRAND terms), but much of the industry is not so sure. Qualcomm holds a number of patents to the CDMA standard which are considered relevant to UMTS.

Qualcomm is currently facing an EU Commission investigation into its licensing practices, as reported here.

South Korea is in a particularly difficult position. It had not adopted the GSM standard and instead went for CDMA technology - on which Qualcomm owns the basic patents. The Wall Street Journal reports that the South Korean Fair Trade Agency has fined it USD 208 Million for anti-competitive practices. The agency alleges the Qualcomm abused its dominant position on the South Korean market place to offer discounts. Apparently Qualcomm holds 99.4% of the South Korean market for chips (as reported on a German website here)

Just to add to Qualcomm's woes, the Japanese Fair Trade Commission have apparently issued yesterday a negative decision - as reported by Qualcomm itself on its website.

Applied Micro sells patents to Qualcomm

The story is a couple of weeks old, but may still be of interest. US chipmaker Applied Micro CIrcuits has sold some patents to telecommunications company Qualcomm for USD 33 Million. Qualcomm is, of course, known for its licensing programme in the GSM/3G. There was a time in which Qualcomm actually made read end consumer products, such as handsets. These days it makes chipsets for use in mobile communications and telecommunications.

Qualcomm has been involved in a number of bun fight with the big players in the telecommunications industry, such as Nokia (see report here ). It has not been part of any licensing pool and seems to prefer to negotiate its deals. Its business model seems to be based around licensing its own developed intellectual property together with purchased-in technology.