However, if you think about it carefully, it may not be that simple. Huawei's collection of 5G patent fees reveals a kind of "helplessness": the helplessness of no core available and the helplessness of mobile phone business.
As we all know, Nokia once swept the world, but with the rise of smart phones, Nokia phones are no longer popular. However, Nokia can still make a profit by charging royalties every year. But compared with the past glory, the annual patent income of more than one billion dollars is only a small profit.
In addition, Nokia's current operating conditions are not good. Just recently, according to Market Watch, a news website owned by Dow Jones, Nokia announced that it would further adjust its cost structure and lay off 5,000 people to 1 10,000 people. After the layoffs, the number of employees in Nokia is only about one-third that of Huawei, and the overall scale is not as good as before.
The current situation of Huawei is very similar to that of Nokia. After the mobile phone business is blocked, it relies on collecting patent royalties to "linger".
In fact, if Huawei's mobile phone business continues to operate healthily, it is impossible for Huawei to charge royalties from 5 G. In other words, Huawei began to charge royalties from 5G, which means that its mobile phone business may follow the footsteps of Nokia, which is a very bad signal.
In the past, Huawei sold a lot of mobile phones, with annual sales of more than 200 million smartphones. Although Huawei owns a large number of communication patents, after cross-licensing with Qualcomm, it still needs to pay a large amount of patent royalties to Qualcomm to offset some of them. For example, in 2020, Qualcomm and Huawei reached a multi-year patent licensing agreement, and Huawei paid a one-time patent licensing fee of US$ 654.38+US$ 800 million to Qualcomm.
In 20 19, Apple also paid a large amount of patent licensing fees to Qualcomm. However, because Apple did not cross-license a large number of communication patents with Qualcomm, it could not offset some of the expenses, so Apple finally paid 4.5 billion to 4.7 billion dollars to Qualcomm, far exceeding the amount paid by Huawei.
It is worth mentioning that Qualcomm has no terminal business, only chip business, so it has taken advantage of the patent disputes with Huawei and Apple. Because patent licensing fees are closely related to smartphone sales.
Qualcomm is a famous "patent hooligan" in the industry, and the patent licensing fee is extremely high. In Qualcomm, official website, we can see that Qualcomm charges according to the selling price of mobile phones, which is 2.275% for 5G single-mode mobile phones and 3.25% for 3G/4G/5G multimode mobile phones.
If Qualcomm's non-core patents are packaged and licensed together, the patent fees for single-mode mobile phones and multi-mode mobile phones will rise to 4% and 5% respectively. Therefore, an Apple iPhone 1 1899 yuan will cost Qualcomm 594.95 yuan. Apple's annual mobile phone shipments are nearly 200 million, and Qualcomm's patent revenue can be imagined.
If Huawei charges a high percentage of patent licensing fees like Qualcomm, the pressure on Huawei itself may be reduced a lot. However, Huawei did not choose to become a "patent hooligan" like Qualcomm.
According to the information in Huawei's White Paper on Innovation and Intellectual Property 2020, Huawei's 5G patent licensing fee is very cheap, and the maximum fee for a single mobile phone is $2.50, only 16 yuan. If not compared with Qualcomm, Huawei's price is the cheapest only compared with Nokia (5 euros) and Ericsson (5 dollars).
How much revenue can Huawei's "cabbage price" patent bring? According to the prediction of Gartner, an international data research institution, in February 20021year, the global smartphone shipments in 20021year were15.35 million, of which 538.5 million were 5G smartphones. According to this forecast, Huawei's 5G intellectual property revenue this year is 538.5 million *2.5 US dollars = 654.38+0.34625 billion US dollars. The actual situation will be less, because every mobile phone will not be charged according to the highest standard.
Compared with Huawei's consumer business income of 467.3 billion yuan (about 765.438+87074 million US dollars) in 2065.438+2009, this patent fee is simply nine Niu Yi cents. Even if the global annual shipment of 5G mobile phones is getting higher and higher in the future, it will bring Huawei a revenue of 65.438+0.5 billion *2.5 USD = 3.75 billion USD at most. This money is far from making up for the deficit of Huawei's mobile phone business.
At one time, Huawei could rely on the excess income of the mobile phone business to support the investment in technology research and development. But now, Huawei's mobile phone business is gradually depressed. How can Huawei's annual R&D investment be supported by the revenue from Mao Mao's 5G patent license?
Without technology and innovation, Huawei's technological advantages will soon be surpassed by other manufacturers. Therefore, I think it is a very bad signal for Huawei to start charging 5G patent licensing fees.