Qualcomm Says Apple To Stop Paying Royalties (reuters.com)

Apple has decided to withhold royalty payments to its contract manufacturers that are owed to Qualcomm, until a legal dispute between the companies is resolved, the chipmaker said on Friday. From a report: Qualcomm, the largest maker of chips used in smartphones, said it will not receive royalties from Apple's contract manufacturers for sales made during the quarter ended March 31. San Diego, California-based Qualcomm also slashed its profit and revenue forecasts for the current quarter, to account for the lost royalty revenue.

Comments

Re:Drive them into the sea!

[sl3xd]

Qualcomm's patents are for CDMA, its competitor to the GSM standard. The two operate so differently it's hard to imagine Qualcomm owns any patent in the GSM pool.

LTE is built upon the GSM standard, which appears to be free of Qualcomm's CMDA grip.

Devices on the Verizon and Sprint networks fail back to CDMA when LTE isn't available... and that means Qualcomm can demand its licensing fees.

GSM-only phones (like AT&T, T-Mobile, and most of the rest of planet Earth) don't need to worry about Qualcomm licenses.