Recently, it was learned from sources close to the National Development and Reform Commission that the NDRC has confirmed the Qualcomm monopoly fact and is investigating Qualcomm sales data to Chinese companies. Prior to July 11, Qualcomm President Derek Aberley exchanged opinions on the anti-monopoly investigation issues with the National Development and Reform Commission and was investigated and inquired.
This is the third time that Qualcomm executives have been interviewed by the National Development and Reform Commission since the NDRC initiated the Qualcomm anti-monopoly investigation last year. The National Development and Reform Commission launched an anti-monopoly investigation of Qualcomm in November last year. The NDRC raided Qualcomm Beijing and Shanghai companies to investigate mobile phone manufacturers, chip manufacturers and other related companies. On February 19 this year, Xu Kunlin, director of the Price Supervision and Anti-Monopoly Bureau of the National Development and Reform Commission, confirmed that the NDRC is investigating Qualcomm's price issue because Qualcomm is suspected of abusing wireless communication standards.
"The National Development and Reform Commission attached great importance to Qualcomm's anti-monopoly investigation. A total of 80 staff members were dispatched, which cost a lot of money, not only to investigate Qualcomm, but also Qualcomm's customers, and sealed up a large amount of information," said a source close to the NDRC.
According to a report obtained by the reporter, Qualcomm has a problem of excessive licensing rates. Qualcomm’s share of patents in WCDMA and LTE standards has declined, but CDMA standards continue to be charged. Chinese IT companies have actively participated in the formulation of 4G standards and obtained many core patents. However, in the Qualcomm structure system, this value is not reflected.
The mainstream industry's consensus on patent licensing fees is no more than 10% of the product's selling price, but Qualcomm's family has reached 5%. In 2013, the average profit of Chinese mobile phone companies was less than 0.5%. In fact, the patents held by Qualcomm are only a part of many mobile phone patents, which is obviously unfair.
In 2013, Qualcomm's chip and license fee revenues totaled $24.3 billion, nearly half of which came from China. License business revenue accounted for 30% of total revenue, but profit accounted for 70%, twice the chip business. It is understood that Qualcomm's savvy is not relying on chips to make too much money, but relying on low prices to allow competitors to obtain opportunities, relying on the monopoly of the chip market, Qualcomm can rely on tying patents to make money. To produce high-end mobile phones, only to purchase chips from Qualcomm, downstream manufacturers have to agree to Qualcomm's patent fees in order to purchase Qualcomm chips.
Qualcomm also built a patent platform for cross-licensing. On the one hand, relying on patent cross-licensing with other patent holders, Qualcomm can provide customers with “safe†products without legal disputes. All related patents are integrated by Qualcomm and can avoid patent disputes. Qualcomm chips are naturally more popular, others Chip makers are hard to match; on the other hand, Qualcomm does not pay fees to cross-licensed patent holders.
Qualcomm's licensing fees for companies such as Samsung and Nokia are far lower than those of Chinese mobile phone manufacturers, and they also constitute discriminatory licenses. This is actually the result of these companies enjoying the struggle between the government and Qualcomm. In the past 10 years, Qualcomm's patent licensing model and chip sales model have been questioned in Europe, America, Korea, Japan and India, and antitrust and intellectual property disputes have continued.
Wei Shizhen, a lawyer at Dacheng Law Firm, believes that the investigation of the “abuse of market dominance†requires a large amount of evidence to be collected, which may be the reason why the NDRC investigation took a long time.
According to relevant news, the US government attaches great importance to the Qualcomm anti-monopoly investigation case, and the final fine may not be as high as originally estimated. However, it is reported that the National Development and Reform Commission currently requires several domestic companies to provide sales data since 2009 (the implementation of the anti-monopoly law) and collect data for punishment.
According to technology blog ReCode, Qualcomm said in a third-quarter conference call today that the NDRC investigation has caused some Chinese companies to postpone the process of obtaining Qualcomm's patent license.
Affected by this news, Qualcomm shares fell 3.79 US dollars to 77.81 US dollars in after-hours trading, a decline of more than 4.5%.
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