The monopoly dispute between Qualcomm and FTC now has a new entrant - Apple.
On Friday, Apple officially filed a lawsuit against Qualcomm, saying that Qualcomm illegally used the monopoly position in the mobile phone chip field and demanded that it refund the patent royalties promised to be refunded by about $1 billion. Affected by this, Qualcomm's share price plummeted in short-term and closed down throughout the day.
In Apple's official statement, it said that in order to avenge Apple's cooperation with FTC, Qualcomm illegally withheld the $1 billion worth of patent royalties that it had promised to return. In the statement, Apple said that "Qualcomm is one of the many developers of mobile baseband chip standards, and has insisted on charging Apple a high patent fee for many years." "The fee charged is five times that of other developers." The more technology, the more fees Qualcomm charges." In order to avenge Apple's cooperation with FTC, it illegally detained the US$1 billion worth of patent royalties that were originally promised.
Earlier this week, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sued Qualcomm for allegedly abusing the FRAND (fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory) patent principles and using patent licenses to force Apple to exclusively purchase their baseband products. FTC said that Qualcomm forced Apple to only purchase Qualcomm's baseband chips, so Qualcomm will reduce the patent fees paid by Apple, from 2011 to 2016.
Apple is a leader in mobile processors. However, it lacks mobile network patents, and the A series processors lack baseband. It now mainly uses the Qualcomm MDM series baseband, which is also the first major customer of Qualcomm. However, in the cooperation between the two parties, Qualcomm adopted the strategy of “do not give the chip without buying the licenseâ€. By controlling the patent royalties paid by Apple, Apple forced Apple to purchase the Qualcomm baseband chip exclusively for 5 years.
According to market analysts, Qualcomm's patent licensing strategy is a heavy burden for mobile phone manufacturers facing increased pressure to reduce functionality and reduce prices. They both buy chips and pay for the underlying technology, and many of them use them. Not used. The patent licensing business accounts for the majority of Qualcomm's pre-tax profits.
As a leading company in 2/3/4G mobile network patents, Qualcomm has been punished more than once for its abuse of market position. Prior to this, the National Development and Reform Commission had already punished Qualcomm’s 6.1 billion fine, and South Korea also fined Qualcomm by 1 trillion won. In addition, Europe, Taiwan and other regions are also investigating Qualcomm’s monopoly.
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