Qualcomm competes for MediaTek's low-end chip market with patent fees

Qualcomm, which has an absolute leading position in the high-end smartphone chip market, has begun to devour the low-cost smartphone market that MediaTek and other companies have long dominated.

Wang Xiang, Qualcomm's global senior vice president and president of Greater China, said at a previous Qualcomm partner meeting that the QRD (Qualcomm Reference Design) plan has been cooperated with more than 40 OEM manufacturers and launched in 13 countries, including China More than 170 smart terminals (including LTE products), and more than 100 new terminal products are under development. These are obviously faster than the "more than 30 OEM manufacturers, 17 OEM manufacturers, 28 smart terminals based on QRD platform" six months ago.

"At present, the Qualcomm products we use are 5% to 10% cheaper than MediaTek." The head of Shenzhen mobile phone manufacturer innos said that compared with the past, Qualcomm is indeed much lower in price.

In order to fully prevent the four core chips of MediaTek, Macquarie Capital Securities pointed out that Qualcomm has expanded the price war. As a result, MediaTek ’s revenue in the first quarter of this year is expected to decline by 9% compared with the fourth quarter of last year.

Su Zhikai, head of the Macquarie Capital Securities Asia Pacific Technology Industry Research Department, pointed out that the previous market expected Qualcomm MSM8225Q pricing to be lower than MediaTek MT6589 by about $ 1. However, according to the latest news, the "price difference" has been expanded to $ 3, which has been confirmed by some Shenzhen mobile phone manufacturers.

Qualcomm QRD project leader Jeff Lorbeck told reporters that Qualcomm is gradually approaching the market to make some decisions. The first thing that can be done is to maintain the competitive advantage of Qualcomm products, the competitive advantage of chip products, and the commercial advantage.

From Qualcomm ’s perspective, smartphones in emerging markets around the world including China are at an unprecedented high-speed development stage, and the release and promotion of Qualcomm ’s QRD platform similar to MediaTek ’s “turnkey” model will enable Qualcomm to expand its smart terminals The plan for the entire market is realized.

"Qualcomm is not a case of competing with MediaTek by price war, but a comprehensive trickle-down strategy. In addition to stabilizing the global leading position of mobile phone chips, it also wants to accelerate the pace of expanding China's market share. Last December The MSM8226 / 8626 launched for the Chinese market is ready to fully open with MediaTek's MT6589 in the second half of the year. "Su Zhikai said.

A person close to MediaTek told reporters that in order to ensure the overall gross profit margin, MediaTek will not take the initiative to engage in a "price war" with Qualcomm. To a large extent, Qualcomm is using the premium of revenue to subsidize the "low" in the market. Price bleeding strategy.

Qualcomm owns most of the basic 3G patents. As long as it produces 3G electronic products, it is inevitable to pay royalties to Qualcomm. Qualcomm generally charges royalties on manufacturers of final products.

"At present, Qualcomm adopts the method of collecting royalties as a percentage of the whole machine. If this method remains unchanged, no company can compete with Qualcomm." The above-mentioned person told reporters that the domestic mobile phone industry's profits are already very meager, plus these Patent fees are undoubtedly worse. According to the statistics of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the average gross profit of a mobile phone is below 10%, and 5% needs to be handed over to Qualcomm. Qualcomm ’s 2012 optical royalty income is estimated to be 6 billion to 7 billion US dollars.

"Many people expect 4G, because TD-LTE is a standard independently developed by China, and various manufacturers such as ZTE Huawei also have a lot of accumulation in 4G patents, but if the charging model of the percentage of the whole machine does not change, 4G mobile phones still cannot be avoided. It is necessary to pay 3G patent fees to Qualcomm, because all 4G mobile phones must have 3G functions, just like all 3G mobile phones now have 2G communication functions. "The above said.

Lin Zonghui, an analyst at DIGITIMES Research in Taiwan, told reporters that there are currently no specific regulations on royalties, but according to the current market trend, if the price difference between Qualcomm and MediaTek is more than $ 5, it will have some short-term impact on the latter. The specific situation remains to be seen.

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