Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Qualcomm and Nokia truce?

Nokia has a new EV-DO capable CDMA phone that has passed FCC certification. This means that it could once again sell phones to the majority of the US market that uses CDMA, beyond the low-end 2135 candybar sold by Metro PCS.

Nokia would have a hard time shipping a new UC CDMA phone given the expiration of its patent license with Qualcomm. On the other hand, this would be consistent with the UT report that the two parties are trying to bring all pending IPR disputes to resolution in a single venue.

Still, the one dissonance comes from CEO Paul Jacobs in a Bloomberg interview:

Jacobs, 45, said Qualcomm is not making any progress in its talks with Nokia, the world's largest maker of mobile phones, in another dispute. The companies are at odds over how much Nokia should pay to use Qualcomm technology under a new licensing agreement, a dispute that has spilled over into several court cases.

``Though we keep talking to them, there hasn't been a lot of movement,'' said Jacobs. A legal victory will be needed to bring the two sides closer together, he said.

In other words, both sides hope to win in court, and neither will be willing to compromise until the courts say who has a better hand. With appeals, that could be another two years.

1 comment:

Vijay Nagarajan said...

Hello Joel,

I write a blog which extensively covers Qualcomm, Broadcom and Interdigital among other topics in the wireless industry. The URL is http://wirelessanalyst.blogspot.com. I hit your site in my search for other blogs on my topics of interest. I am all the more enthused about reading a second book about Qualcomm (after Dave Mock's version). I suppose this will be more updated and will cover the company's latest legal wranglings and its changing face in the light of OFDMA taking over etc. I look forward to your work. I also think that you may get some additional insights for your book from my articles. All the best.

Vijay