phill, as far as selling W-CDMA infrastructure, everyone will pay QCOM a royalty on the sale of the equipment, we know that. The question at that point is who made what's inside it. If Company Y has no cross-licensing deal with QCOM (they have no patents and simply pay QCOM royalties) and they design and sell an IC for a W-CDMA base station (BS) to Samsung, Company Y pays a royalty on the sale of the IC, and Samsung pays a royalty on the sale of the BS. If TI designs an IC for use in a NOK BS, TI won't pay QCOM a royalty for the IC (under terms of their full cross-license agreement) but NOK will pay a royalty on the sale of the end BS. But I wasn't trying to imply NOK in particular has some distinct advantage over Korean manufacturers in the W-CDMA infrastructure business, this will all get worked out somehow, I'm sure there'll be plenty of suppliers of ICs and equipment, and some will benefit QCOM financially more than others.
My understanding of the agreement is also that QCOM will pay nothing to NOK, and they have access to NOK's GSM and W-CDMA patent portfolio for the purpose of designing and selling CDMA and/or Multi-Mode ICs. That's where it gets fuzzy IMO, it doesn't mention anything about NOK designing ICs (all CDMA versions) for use in their own products or for the purpose of selling those ICs. I've always assumed at the very minimum, they'd use them in their own products, and simply pay QCOM a royalty on the end product only. That's where they'd have an advantage over a company with no IC IP, that may have to pay QCOM for using the IC IP, and the sale of the end product. But we don't have many cases like that to refer to, most everyone just buys the ICs from QCOM and pays the royalty on the equipment. And since NOK has struggled with this (making their own ICs) while others (like Samsung) have excelled (by using QCOM ICs) and gained market share, this really hasn't turned out to be an advantage for NOK to this point.
But let's face it, the networking division of NOK (and many other co's) is not profitable for a reason, they practically give away that equipment just so there's a system in place to sell their phones to, and they're the best in the business at making phones. So we really need to focus on the phone side of things, the network side is difficult to make money on (as is the phone side but some differences here). You're right, W-CDMA should allow plenty of new players in with their small share of W-CDMA patents to cross-license with everyone else and bring down the costs to be in the phone business. And Samsung and some others are getting pretty damn good at making phones. Personally though, I like the IC makers and guys that get the royalties, so QCOM and TI are my favorites here. NOK is great if you're betting on a huge phone replacement cycle to start in the next few years as people migrate to color displays, camera phones, high speed data, etc.
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