Huawei demanding 5G patent fees pushing Nokia towards R&D

Most of the smartphones used today are functioning seamlessly because of some patented software or hardware Nokia developed in the past years. Nokia has a pretty large patent portfolio of essential technologies that power up networks we today are using to connect with the world around us.

But, as 5G is slowly coming, some other players are starting to dominate the networking business. besides Ericsson, Huawei is on a path of becoming the Nokia of the future, and in many ways, it reminds me of Nokia from the past. It is a strong company that not just makes great smartphones, but currently has the world’s largest portfolio of 5G patents.

Many of those might not be essential for 5G to work on your smartphone, but it is enough for Huawei to start asking for 5G royalties from phone makers like Apple and Samsung.

Bloomberg reports that Huawei will ask for a reasonable fee which is going to be approximately 2.5 USD per smartphone, or lower than what Nokia and Ericsson are asking the Huawei spokesman said. This amount will give them between 1.2 billion and 1.3 billion USD for the period between 2019 and 2021.

It seems that Huawei wants to sit on a table together with Nokia, Ericsson, Qualcomm, and others now when 5G is dealing new cards. This might be the reason for Nokia to start reinvesting more into Research and development which is the only way for a networking giant to stay fit and ready to fight off others.

The smartphone and networking sectors are changing at an incredible pace and it will be interesting to see how things are going to wind up.

Source Bloomberg