Chinese tech giant Huawei will start charging royalties of up to $2.50 in 2021 for phones that follow Huawei's 5G standard and work properly, Ding Jianxin, head of Huawei's intellectual property department, said Tuesday.
Huawei will offer a reasonable percentage rate applied to the phone's selling price, Ding said, without disclosing the exact percentage.
Huawei will follow the FRAND principle as a key technology contributor to the 5G standard. The company hopes to provide information that will provide implementers of 5G technology with transparent cost expectations, in order to increase investment certainty, and promote the adoption of 5G technology, Ding said.
Huawei has pledged to charge lower rates than competitors such as Qualcomm, Ericsson, and Nokia, and will negotiate with Apple and Samsung over 5G royalties, according to Song Liuping, vice president and chief legal officer of Huawei.
Huawei hopes to cash in on its research after the US disrupted Huawei's supply chain.
The company is expected to earn about $1.3 billion from patent licenses between 2019 and 2021, Ding said, adding that "Huawei today 's success is the result of long-term investment in independent innovation and research and development."
The newly released "2020 EU Industrial R&D Investment Ranking" has Huawei third in the world.
A white paper on intellectual property released by Huawei on Tuesday shows that by the end of 2020, Huawei has more than 100,000 active patents in more than 40,000 patent families worldwide, with more than 90 percent of the patents being invention patents.
Over the past 20 years, Huawei has conducted extensive cross-licensing negotiations with major patent holders in the ICT industry and has now signed more than 100 patent licensing and cross-licensing agreements with major ICT manufacturers in the US, Europe, Japan, and South Korea, the company said.
The white paper shows Huawei had 105,000 people engaged in research and development in 2020, accounting for about 53.4 percent of the company's total workforce.
In 2019, R&D expenses were RMB 131.7 billion ($20.356 billion), or about 15.3 percent of annual revenue. As of 2019, the cumulative R&D spending over the past ten years exceeds RMB 600 billion (approximately US$90 billion).
(Source: Huawei)
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