InterDigital Inc (IDCC)

[plumear]

jai, I couldn't agree with you more. When you consider the following points, I can see many reasons for both China and IDCC to keep this under wraps as long as possible.

*IDCC has entered into a joint venture with a specific Chinese manufacturer, to develop the needed technology to make proprietary baseband chips for the TD-CDMA market work.
*IDCC will apparently be getting some consideration for that work up front
*IDCC will own that technology to license to and collect royalties from to all other users besides SPRD
*The likelihood that many patents originating from the joint venture will be adopted as part of the TD-CDMA standard is very high, (IMO).

I say this because China appears very intent on owning as much of their "home grown" technology as possible, apparently to eliminate the payment of licensing fees. The more parts of the technology that their own nationally based baseband supplier has royalty free, the better they have achieved that goal. With this in mind, what do we think are the chances that SPRD's chips will be favored, at least by other Chinese manufacturers, over all the others, (assuming that they work well)? IF the co-developed technology is adopted as part of the standard, will not all other manufacturers have to go through IDCC for the use of that? We do not know the true extent of the agreement between IDCC and SPRD but if the above scenario is close this potentially could be absolutely HUGE for IDCC some time in the future and I applaud IDCC for the arrangement.