An interesting piece of information keeps circulating in Korea's newspapers, and Qualcomm has denied it twice. The news is that leading mobile-phone makers Samsung and LG can paying some CDMA royalties to Qualcomm in August. Reports have been continually circulating that Korean mobile phone makers' royalty payments to Qualcomm will cease in August 2006 for domestic sales, and in 2008 for international sales. Qualcomm keeps denying this, twice in two different press releases. "There is no date on which a license under all of Qualcomm's patents becomes royalty free," a Qualcomm spokeswoman said. In fact, royalties Qualcomm collects in Korea could actually increase significantly in August because the company will no longer need to pay 20 percent of them to a government research institute. Maybe it's Korea's new PR move since it has long been bitter about the amount of royalties vendors have to pay Qualcomm for using CDMA.
To read more about Korea's claim that some CDMA royalty payments will stop:
- check out this report from vnunet.com