SAN DIEGO—Now that the Chinese government has sanctioned its homegrown TD-SCDMA technology as the third-generation technology of the land, and with precious 3G licenses about to be granted to Chinese operators, Qualcomm Inc.’s plans to charge royalties on TD-SCDMA products now carry more weight.
The CDMA developer said it signed a W-CDMA and TD-SCDMA modem card and router license agreement with 4G Systems GmbH, a German wireless developer and supplier. Qualcomm said that under the royalty-bearing agreement, it granted 4G a license to develop, manufacture and sell W-CDMA and TD-SCDMA modem card and router products.
Regarding royalties, Qualcomm’s press release stated that 4G will pay Qualcomm’s standard rates, which the company says “are the same irrespective of the CDMA standard implemented by the modem card or router products.”
“Qualcomm supports all 3G standards, including TD-SCDMA, which also is based on CDMA technology,” Qualcomm wrote in response to questions from RCR Wireless News. “As a senior member of the TD-SCDMA Forum, we continue to pay close attention to its development in China. We cannot speculate on potential roll outs or timing. We believe that we have essential intellectual property that applies and we already have approximately 60 license agreements outside of China that include TD-SCDMA (including Siemens).”
Although many in the industry consider TD-SCDMA’s development by Chinese technologists an attempt to use the basis of Qualcomm’s proprietary CDMA technology without paying royalties, Qualcomm plans to charge royalties on TD-SCDMA anyway.
And the market potential for TD-SCDMA is huge. In China there are more than 400 million wireless subscribers already, and China’s market is expected to grow 65 percent by the end of 2010, according to Informa Telecoms & Media.
Analysts at ABI Research expect an independent TD-SCDMA network to be built in China, but said that the current GSM network would be maintained to ensure national coverage.
