With its smartphone business crippled by its place on the U.S. Entity List, Huawei this week said that it would require Apple, Samsung, and other hardware makers to pay royalties on the 5G technologies it controls.
“We believe licensing should balance return on investment and cost pressures of implementation in the industry,” Huawei’s Jason Ding said at a corporate event today. But the firm will seek what it calls “reasonable” royalty payments. “For every phone that complies with 5G standards, we will not seek a royalty rate higher than US$2.5 per unit.”
These rates are lower than those charged by other 5G patent holders, like Ericsson, Nokia, and Qualcomm, Huawei said. And the firm will also license Internet of Things (IoT) technologies for use in vertical markets.
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“We respect the [intellectual property] of others and pay licensing fees to use their IP according to international rules,” Ding said. “We were one of the first companies in China to sign licensing agreements with Western companies to use their IP, like Qualcomm in 2001 and Ericsson in 2002.”
Huawei owns the largest 5G patent portfolio in the world. And with over 100,000 patents in over 40,000 patent families, Huawei is the largest patent owner in China; over 3000 of those patent families are related to 5G. The company spends over $20 billion each year on research and development, and it makes over 6,000 contributions to international standards organizations every year.