Replies to post #129209 on Zeev's Turnips Patch-No Politics (ZEEV)

[phill]

OT (more QCOM cross licensing minutiae, for those still interested)<g>)

mjk, I know of only 3 possible "Company C" examples of advantage gained over competitors by IP cross licensing with QCOM:

1) MOT did a mutual (partial) waiver deal with QCOM on early generation CDMA stuff. Some of that deal may have transferred forward to wCDMA IP, but I don't think so. My understanding is that MOT now pays royalties on QCOM's newer CDMA IP, just like everybody else.

2) ERICY got some breaks, I believe, on infrastructure only (not on phones) when it bought QCOM's infrastructure division in 1999.

3) TXN, in the IC (only) deal we've been talking about.

I don't think NOK, or anybody else in either the phone or phone IC business, has any advantage whatever over Samsung, or anybody else, by virtue of a cross license deal with QCOM.

The NOK/QCOM deal is pretty strictly a one-way street, to my knowledge. NOK pays QCOM a percentage fee on the phone price, just like everybody else, regardless of whether NOK uses QCOM ICs, NOK ICs, or 3rd party stuff. QCOM's cross license and use of NOK IP is just part of QCOM's fee - a penalty, if you will, for NOK's stubbornness in resisting agreement for so long.


regards,

phill

[Bullwinkle]

MJK,

Was just cruising through some of the conversation between you and Phil and it reminded me of the day you first replied to me and I told you that I agreed with 99% of what you had stated and that there was a trivial 1% that I did not agree with. Well I would like to touch on that 1% if I may...

The 1% I was referring to has to do with the manufacturing of ASIC's and the designs. QCOM is a fabless company, always has been that I know of and QCT gets its chips from IBM. So someone has always produced chips for them and the designs have always been provided by QCOM, they are not made by the licensed manufacturers (read as Fabs). Now as for Ti, I am not exactly sure how much IP that Ti received in their deal, but this is a unique case and I am pretty sure QCOM did not give away everything (being as the exact particulars are unknown, my comment is should be taken as speculative and JMMO).

Fabless
http://www.cdmatech.com/news/releases/2002/021212_fsa_award.jsp

QUALCOMM Names IBM as Supplier of the Year
http://www.wirelessdevnet.com/news/2003/92/news4.html

Enabling the Industry
http://www.qualcomm.com/cdma/industry.html

You probably knew all of this already, but for anyone else reading this they can follow along and draw their own conclusions as they may.