Icon: enlarge
5G lettering at the Mobile World Congress 2018 in Barcelona
Photo: Andrea Warnecke / picture alliance / dpa
The Chinese technology group Huawei wants to license its patented 5G technology to other smartphone manufacturers on a large scale.
The company announced this on Tuesday in Shenzhen and presented a licensing model for the first time.
Accordingly, the license fee is based on the sales price of the respective cell phone and should be a maximum of 2.50 dollars (2.10 euros) per device.
With Apple and Samsung, Huawei wants to negotiate fees and possible patent exchange agreements, reports »Bloomberg«.
For the years 2019 to 2021, the company retrospectively expects revenues from its 5G patents of 1.2 to 1.3 billion dollars.
In the dispute over license fees for wireless technologies, Apple and Qualcomm had a protracted patent dispute a few years ago, in which Apple had described the chip manufacturer's demands as far too high.
Even then it was about billions.
In mid-2019, the two companies finally agreed on an out-of-court settlement.
According to estimates, Apple is said to have paid the equivalent of around 4.2 billion euros to Qualcomm at the time.
Huawei holds more than 100,000 patents
Huawei holds the largest number of 5G patents in the world.
At the same time, the Chinese company is under pressure because the US trade war against China is making it difficult for it to access technology from abroad.
As a consequence, Huawei has increased its own research and development efforts.
By the end of 2020, Huawei said it held more than 100,000 active patents in over 40,000 patent families worldwide.
Its R&D investment in 2019 was 131.7 billion yuan.
With the publication of the licensing model for its own 5G technology, Huawei wants to give the industry a more transparent cost structure, said Chief Legal Officer Song Liuping.
This step will support companies in their investment decisions for 5G and digital transformation.
Huawei is repeatedly accused, especially from the USA, of illegally using the intellectual property of Western companies.
At the Huawei event, Francis Gurry, longtime director general of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), contradicted this assessment.
Huawei is the world leader in innovation, according to Gurry.
Last year the company filed 5,464 international patent applications, almost twice as many as its closest competitor, Samsung.
Icon: The mirror
mak / dpa
