Huawei announced that it has filed intellectual property lawsuits against Samsung in the United States and China, including the Northern District Court of California and the Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court. In the lawsuit, Huawei asked Samsung to compensate Huawei for intellectual property infringement, including high-value patents related to communication technology and software used by Samsung mobile phones.
Huawei's move comes straight to the point. Personally, I think its symbolic significance is far greater than its actual significance. For Huawei, regardless of the outcome of this move, Huawei is the ultimate winner. This lawsuit not only highlights Huawei's strong patent technology accumulation, but also expresses its ambition to realize patents.
But more importantly, it has made a huge brand marketing promotion for Huawei's smart phone brand, which is of great help to enhance Huawei's smart phone brand image. Judging from the results of previous patent litigation in the industry, it is more likely that Huawei and Samsung will reach a cross-licensing agreement.
First, Huawei and Samsung are most likely to settle this patent lawsuit.
According to Tencent Technology, this lawsuit involves 4G standard patents and patents related to smartphone functions. In view of Huawei's 28-year communication accumulation in communication technology and its important position in core patents such as 4G. Many onlookers think that Samsung will lose this time and will pay. Many core fans of Huawei use the results of the patent war between Samsung and Apple and the results of the patent cross-licensing reached between Huawei and Apple not long ago to conclude that Samsung will fail.
But this conclusion, Huawei fans may be a bit wishful thinking. It is true that Huawei has rich patent accumulation, but Samsung is worse than Huawei in patent accumulation. In fact, in terms of patent holdings and ITE core patents, Samsung can almost be said to have surpassed Huawei in all directions.
In China: According to Huawei's own published data, by the end of 20 15, Huawei had applied for 52,550 China patents; As for Samsung, according to the relevant data of the Internet Technology Innovation Patent Observation Report (20 15) organized by Peking University Internet Law Center, Samsung Group applied for the largest number of patents in China, reaching 5499 1.
In the United States: According to the data released by USPTO, in 20 15, Samsung * * * obtained 5072 American patents, ranking second only to IBM. Huawei ranked 44th, and * * * won 800 patents.
In Europe; According to foreign media TechCrunch, the European Patent Office published the patent application data of Europe in 20 14 years. Among them, Samsung Electronics submitted 254 1 patent applications in Europe, ranking first. Huawei ranked fifth with a total of 600 patents/kloc-0.
On the core patent of LTE, it is different from Huawei's strength that we have always thought. In fact, Samsung has surpassed Huawei in the number of core patents licensed by LTE.
According to the statistics of Taiwan Province National Research Institute in 20 14, Samsung and Huawei ranked second and third in LTE core patents, including 652 for Samsung and 603 for Huawei.
In 20 16, according to the data collected by the Intellectual Property Office of the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan Province Province from the European Telecommunication Standardization Arrangement (ETIS) and the USPTO of the United States Patent Office, the latest telecom work patent trends written by authoritative figures and experts in various fields of global mobile communication, including 75 16 standard essential patents, have been ranked first in the world by Samsung in recent two years. It has 954 standard essential patents, accounting for 12.7% of the core standard essential patents of 4G LTE, while Huawei ranks seventh, accounting for only 5.3%.
As can be seen from the above data, Huawei is not superior to Samsung in terms of patent holdings. In the face of Huawei's patent lawsuit, Samsung has said in a statement that "this lawsuit will be comprehensively evaluated and appropriate measures will be taken to defend Samsung's commercial interests." In view of the long-term anxiety of patent litigation and the final life-and-death settlement, I personally think that most of the patent litigation between Huawei and Samsung is based on the possibility of settlement.
Second, Huawei sued Samsung for patent infringement, which is a massive brand marketing activity.
As mentioned above, we can see that compared with Samsung, Huawei is not dominant in patent holdings, and it may not be able to get benefits, and it is time-consuming and laborious. So why does Huawei hesitate to fight with Samsung?
Personally, Huawei may be more concerned about the brand pictogram that this lawsuit has created for Huawei than the outcome of the lawsuit. It can be said that Huawei's lawsuit against Samsung's patent infringement is more like a massive brand marketing campaign of Huawei's smartphone brand.
In the last article, I said. In addition to attacking competitors, realizing and cooperating, manufacturers can also carry out marketing platform for their own brands when using their own patents.
An obvious trend is that at present, domestic consumers have begun to change from price worship to technology worship, and domestic manufacturers are more willing to show their innovative ability with patents, hoping to win the respect and love of consumers. Huawei is also one of them. In recent years, we can clearly find that in Huawei's self-promotion, Huawei's annual R&D expenditure ratio and patent accumulation are frequently mentioned.
As Huawei's consumer business, Huawei's brand is well known to the public and has become a hot spicy chicken. Its head, Yu Chengdong, has said on many occasions that he will surpass Apple and Samsung to become the number one in the world.
But in fact, although Huawei has made great progress in the past two years, compared with Samsung, there is a huge gap in terms of brand gold content, smartphone market share and sales data. It can even be said that Huawei is not a heavyweight at all compared with Samsung.
In terms of brand, compared with Interbrand Top 100, which Huawei is proud of, Huawei ranked 88th in 20 15, and its brand value rose to US$ 4.952 billion. Samsung ranks seventh in this list, with a brand value of $45.297 billion.
There is a huge gap between the two. As for the sales volume and share of smartphones, take the data of the first quarter of 20 16 as an example. Although Huawei's growth rate is strong, Samsung is still far ahead. Data show that in the first quarter of 20 16, Samsung sold 810.9 million smartphones, with a market share of 24.5%, while Huawei sold 27.5 million smartphones, with a market share of 8.2%.
It can be seen that the size of Samsung is still almost three times that of Huawei, and it has obviously shown a rebound momentum with Samsung after S6. This is naturally a disadvantage for Huawei, which wants to compete with Samsung.
Today, Huawei sued Samsung. In terms of effect, after a wave of exposure by the global media, most consumers think that Huawei's smartphone brand has reached a level comparable to that of Samsung, and began to use patents to compete for dominance. On the one hand, it highlights Huawei's patent innovation advantages. One obvious evidence that can be seen is that on Weibo and WeChat, after the news came out, countless people were proud of Huawei's brand and admired Huawei's strength.
From this perspective, it doesn't really matter what the outcome of the lawsuit is. In any case, Huawei is the big winner this time. On the smart phone brand, this round of global media exposure is of great help to enhance Huawei's brand image. Make it easier for consumers to accept.
Third, Huawei shows its patent realization ambition, and some manufacturers with weak patent accumulation should be vigilant.
Of course, Huawei sued Samsung, although I personally think that its brand marketing component is greater than its claim for patent compensation. But that doesn't mean it doesn't mean anything else. In my opinion, Huawei's move can even be said to be a sign of the real rise of domestic manufacturers and should be encouraged. After all, the inherent influence of domestic patents is being chased. Huawei can dare to sue Samsung for patents, which not only reflects the consolidation of Huawei's status as the boss of domestic smart phones, but also recognizes its years of patent cultivation.
At the same time, Huawei's move also exposed its patent realization ambition. As a patent manufacturer, Huawei has already had the demand for patent realization. As early as 20 14, there were rumors in the industry that Huawei had sent a lawyer's letter to domestic manufacturers. Although it was rumored by Huawei afterwards. However, in the face of "patent use", Huawei also made the following statement: "Huawei has always advocated intellectual property protection and paid technological innovation, and is committed to building a fair and healthy business environment."
With the mutual authorization of Huawei and Apple and the lawsuit against Samsung, it may be only a matter of time before Huawei and domestic manufacturers grant patents. And some manufacturers with weak patent accumulation should speed up the patent layout.