Davis) said in the company's performance conference call that Huawei will pay Qualcomm a patent fee of $65.438+$50 million every quarter, which is only a 4G patent, and 5G may pay more in the future.
Similarly, Huawei also needs to pay patent fees to Ericsson at a price of $5 per high-end mobile phone and $2.50 per low-end device. Although this charge seems very small, it is still considerable in terms of the monthly sales of tens of millions of Huawei units. Huawei needs to pay 5G fees to Qualcomm and Ericsson, mainly because Huawei is both a communication company and a mobile phone company. According to the internationally accepted patent regulations, every mobile phone must pay patent fees, among which baseband patents account for the bulk. In contrast, Qualcomm and Ericsson only make baseband phones, so they don't need to pay Huawei patent fees.
According to the standards previously announced by Qualcomm, only 5G mobile phones will be supported in the future, and the patent fee will be charged at 2.275% of the price of the whole machine; If it is a mobile phone supporting 3G/4G/5G, 3.25% of the selling price of the whole machine will be charged as the patent fee. Apple switched to Intel baseband chips because it was dissatisfied with Qualcomm's high patent fees. Even so, the 5G era will not bypass Qualcomm.
Although Huawei needs to pay royalties to Qualcomm and Ericsson, it can also charge royalties from other manufacturers, and its biggest customer should also be Apple. According to the data, in 20 18, Huawei granted 769 patents to Apple and Apple granted 98 patents to Huawei. Although Huawei refused to disclose the specific patent fees paid by Apple, it is estimated that it can reach hundreds of millions of dollars every year. Huawei's patent fees charged to domestic enterprises are relatively low. Although no specific figures have been published, they are certainly lower than the fees charged by Qualcomm. In fact, in the 4G era, Huawei never charged domestic manufacturers for baseband patents.