The era of smartphones has seen phone sales going crazy. There is an ongoing ‘cold’ war between phone companies , as to who would emerge victorious. The same happened recently in China, where the Tech-Giant Qualcomm has filed a new lawsuit against the ‘All-Mighty’ Apple. The lawsuit directly asks to completely ban the sale of Apple iPhones in China.
Not only is this lawsuit asking for a full nationwide ban on sales, but on manufacturing as well. The chip-maker Qualcomm and Cupertino Based Apple have been involved in a war on legal fronts quite recently. This battle started out in the US and now has gained worldwide spread, with this recent lawsuit. The lawsuit was filed in a Beijing intellectual property court and alleges that Apple had indulged in patent infringement. Moreover it also asks for a relief, based on this.
Qualcomm is reported to claim that Apple has violated patent laws on three fronts . None of these patents are vital to industry standards (e.g the USB port is a standard) . This necessary implies that Qualcomm in itself cannot be forced to license them.
According to a Qualcomm spokeswoman Christine Trimble who told BloomBerg , “Apple employs technologies invented by Qualcomm without paying for them,”. This means that Apple is in lieu of charges to Qualcomm. The patents are said to cover power management and also the iPhone’s force touch feature.
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Apple has demerited the claims in a statement of their own. They state that : “Apple believes deeply in the value of innovation, and we have always been willing to pay fair and reasonable rates for patents we use. In our many years of ongoing negotiations with Qualcomm, these patents have never been discussed.
Further adding it was mentioned that “Regulators around the world have found Qualcomm guilty of abusing their position for years. This claim is meritless and, like their other courtroom maneuvers, we believe this latest legal effort will fail.”
As mentioned earlier, Qualcomm had filed a lawsuit against Apple in US, by filing a similar claim in July, at an attempt to bring the iPhone sales to a halt. That lawsuit claimed even more patent infringements by Apple, amounting to a total of six violations.
But there would always be a friendly way to get back to negotiating the terms of these claims. According to an analyst at Canaccord Genuity, Mike Walkley “Apple’s not going to miss one day of production. If for any reason they get a negative judgment, they’d go back to paying Qualcomm in the short term. They’re not going to risk their business model for this.”
Thought it is nearly impossible that iPhone sales would eventually get banned as a result of this lawsuit. This lawsuit seemed more like a personal vendetta of getting back at Apple for filing several lawsuits against Qualcomm worldwide. This also means, that Qualcomm might end up with a leverage against Apple , when it is going to negotiate about the suits filed against them.
But in the worst case scenario of Apple sales going down by implementing the ban, it would not only aid Chinese manufacturers which use Qualcomm’s chips mostly, but also help other manufacturers striving for a huge market share like Oppo, Huawei, Xiaomi and Vivo.
Bear this in mind, that a major portion of Apple’s revenue comes in from China, so a sudden sales ban could drastically affect the Cupertino Based Tech Giant, which would most certainly want to avoid such a scenario.
