Between Qualcomm and Apple, the wireless chips and patented technology fees have been extended for a long time. From the beginning of 2017, Apple and Qualcomm have been in a state of litigation and anti-litigation legal disputes. Strong. But now the attitude of Qualcomm has clearly begun to soften.
According to a Reuters report, Qualcomm has made three concessions a few days ago and hopes to resolve the dispute with Apple.
First, in terms of patent fee acceptance, Qualcomm lowered the threshold for licensing, and smart phone manufacturers were able to choose lower-cost licensing projects, from 5% of original equipment costs to 3.25% of equipment costs.
Second, by opening up its 5G patents, it no longer takes the patent-bundling path of the CDMA era. Mobile and tablet manufacturers do not need to pay extra fees for adopting Qualcomm's 5G communications licenses, which can placate regulators and the vast majority of manufacturers.
Qualcomm said that it hopes to provide more technical and patented products without increasing prices, and create a good foundation for the future stable market. They call their own company's 5G licensing policy as 'regulator-friendly' license.
Finally, Qualcomm is considering gradually discarding the consistent practice of charging a percentage of equipment costs, which will benefit high-end mobile phones such as the Apple iPhone.
In addition, Qualcomm also announced last week that it will only evaluate the first 400 US dollars (291 pounds) of the net price of mobile phones. The previous price cap was 500 US dollars.
But so far Apple has not responded to this. Qualcomm now faces not only anti-trust investigations from the government and regulators, as well as huge fines, but also the future of being abandoned by Apple and allowing its old rival Intel to take advantage of it. At the same time, Huawei and other smart phone companies are also jointly resisting Qualcomm’s patent fees, coupled with the recent turbulent acquisition (and takeover) event that has caused their share price to be greatly affected. This is indeed a major pressure. Patent fees are reduced, and patent fees are reduced. Contradictions with various smart device manufacturers are imperative.