Everyone sues the crap out of each other over 3G, and even today, issues remains. There is so many patents issued by everyone from Nokia to Docomo, and a single handset is an accumulation of all these patents. Its really nothing more than legal warfare using patents as positioning tactics for lawsuits or bargaining. Hence why all the patent applications everyone is doing are all royalty or anti-royalty hedges. This isn't about innovation anymore.
Here even NTT Docomo has its own stake. Docomo has the first implementation of 3G technology in the world using W-CDMA as the air interface.
When cooler heads prevailed, the potential of the W-CDMA market is so such that the contenders agree to put the axe aside and set some common agreements. Among them, the total royalties paid won't amount to 5% of the cost of the device.
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Much of the technology implementation isn't in the chipsets themselves, but the software.
■ Huawei has full command of the core WCDMA technologies
Huawei developed its own WCDMA system and has mastered the core technologies, such as high-performance decoding algorithms (e.g. MAX-LOG and SOVA), access algorithms for a terminal moving at high speed, demodulation algorithms in the case of complicated fast attenuation, smart antenna technology, multi-user detection technology, etc. By the end of 2002, 516 patent applications had been submitted by Huawei in the 3G field. These patents involve key technologies such as voice coding/decoding algorithms, channel estimation, multi-path searching, etc. Huawei has also reached an agreement with Ericsson and Nokia with regard to WCDMA patents.
In addition, Huawei commands the key chip technologies of WCDMA, which demonstrates the technical strength of Huawei in the WCDMA field. Huawei is able to provide an ASIC base band chipset, which covers all procedure relating to 3G base band processing. Its coding/decoding capability is four times greater than that of typical chips. The single chip has over eight million equivalent logic gates and contains approximately 32 million transistors (the Pentium IV contains 22 million transistors).