Qualcomm Collects $2.7B From Royalties In Korea
In March, I wrote about a technology called WIPI that the Korean government was pushing as a substitute for Qualcomm's BREW. At the time, I said that "WIPI is also an open standard, not controlled by any one company, which is attractive to Korean wireless carriers who want to minimize royalty payments, many of which go to San Diego (Qualcomm)." Well, some numbers just out of Seoul provide a little more information on how strong that motivation is. Korean companies, as heavy users of CDMA technology owned by Qualcomm, have sent about US$2.7B in royalties to the San Diego company since 1997. But I'm not in agreement with Korea on their beef. QCOMM has offered them a superior technology that has given them a technological advantage over other countries, and put them in a unique position to be experts in what has become the world standard for 3G, CDMA. Companies like Samsung and LG are growing strong on the back of CDMA, and stand to reap even greater future rewards. Apparently, a major Korean complaint is that Qualcomm gets a share of the total device price for CDMA handsets, including cameras, screens, smartphone ability, etc. even when this has nothing to do with the CDMA chipset. As the phones have gotten more complicated and expensive, QCOMM is getting more $$. Uhhh...well, who signed that contract on the Korean side? Instead of blaming Qualcomm for taking their money, blame the guys who didn't see this coming and signed anyway.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
