Bonum Certa Men Certa

Phones/Mobility (Trillion-Dollar Market) May Have Become Infested and Encumbered by Aggressive, Dying Companies

When all that's left is soon-to-expire patents

Mobile



Summary: The tough reality that new entrants/entrepreneurs are facing now that a few dying giants look to "monetise" their patents rather than create anything

WE recently wrote about how Qualcomm, BlackBerry and Nokia had devolved into something that's akin to patent trolls. Sure, they still have their names on some products, but it's Apple and Android OEMs that dominate this market. Ericsson and Microsoft, moreover, mostly 'participate' in this market in the sense that they pass their patents to patent trolls (Microsoft even passes Nokia's patents to trolls), in order for these trolls to target companies which actually produce something.



A few days ago CCIA's Josh Landau said that "Qualcomm’s Anti-Competitive Conduct Could Be Exacerbated By Mergers" and it's about that highly-publicised rumour and bid from last month. To quote Landau, "Qualcomm’s been busy over the past few months. Defending against accusations of anti-competitive conduct from competition authorities in the US and elsewhere around the world, trying to acquire NXP Semiconductors, fending off an acquisition attempt from Broadcom, and—most recently—filing yet another round of new lawsuits to try to force Apple to pay higher-than-FRAND rates for their patents.

"Patent Progress has covered Qualcomm’s anti-competitive conduct in the past [1][2][3][4][5], but the proposed mergers would increase Qualcomm’s ability to suppress competition and provide them with the ability to do so in new markets. That could be a particular problem in growing markets like the Internet of Things and automotive computing."

We already wrote quite a lot about Qualcomm earlier this year and Florian Müller regularly covers its fight against Apple, which involves FRAND, SEP, and other such euphemisms. Here is his latest article.

IAM continues calling trolling/predation "monetisation" in relation to BlackBerry. [via]

Is this the future of mobile? A bunch of dead companies scattering patents for trolls to just 'tax' everything, artificially inflating the prices of everything?

IAM has also just published this blog post about Ericsson, which is fighting TCL in the US (neither company is American). There's resistance. This is why Ericsson increasingly operates through patent trolls (proxies), which cannot be sued. It's quite a racket. To quote IAM:

The case was filed by TCL in 2014 when it alleged that Ericsson was in breach of its FRAND obligations following negotiations between the two sides over a licence to the Swedish telco’s standard essential patents (SEPs) for 2G, 3G and 4G mobile technology. It was part of a worldwide dispute between the two companies which has also seen Ericsson bringing several patent infringement lawsuits against TCL in a number of jurisdictions (many of which are now on hold).

In its original complaint TCL revealed that it was seeking: “A judicial accounting on what constitutes a FRAND royalty rate in all respects consistent with Ericsson’s promises to license its patents identified as (or alleged to be) “essential” to the 2G, 3G and 4G standards.” That is why the case has piqued the interest of many in the patent-owning community – a ruling from the court could provide guidance on the royalty rates for one of the two or three leading SEP portfolios in the mobile world, so giving a much wider benchmark against which all SEP licence deals in the space might be negotiated.


Words/acronyms like SEP and FRAND mislead and warp the debate. What we have here is discriminatory, unfair, and unreasonable. A few dead (or dying) companies can't stop suing everybody else and it's slowing down the market.

Recent Techrights' Posts

How Not to Build Software
code forges that need a Web browser perhaps fill some 'niche' demand
GAFAM and "MATA"
The use of dark humour there hopefully helps illuminate what a lot of "modern" technology became like and how it interacts with human civilisation (to what ends and whose gain)
Flying in 2025
worse than ever before
The UEFI 9/11 - Part III - Chaos is Scheduled to Happen Second Thursday of September (No Matter What the Microsofters Tell You)
The clock is ticking
Downplaying the Impact of "UEFI 9/11" is a Losing Strategy
we won't publish much whilst on holiday
 
In Kazakhstan, Yandex Estimated to be 20 Times Bigger Than Microsoft
Bing is measured as down this month
Shutterstock Not Enough? The Register MS Uses Slop Images in Articles (Seemingly More and More Over Time)
Cost-saving trajectory amid office shutdown?
Gemini Links 30/08/2025: Games, PostmarketOS, and Slop
Links for the day
Links 30/08/2025: Imgur Uproar and Many Ukraine Updates (Mediazona Reports Over 200,000 Russians Died for Putin)
Links for the day
Birds Are Not "Pests and Vermin", Privacy is Not a Crime, and GNU/Linux is Not 'Hacking Platform'
I could not help but think of Free software analogies
The Sites Should Be Very Fast Again
That issue is now resolved
Activists, Including Technical Activists, Need Not Pursue Affirmation
Techrights doesn't play or participate in a "popularity contest"
Government Sites Should Run Free Software
Not proprietary bloatware with buzzwords
LLM Slopfarms Take No Breaks
When people run sites by bots they don't need to worry about "breaks"
GNOME Having a Meltdown Again
Thanks and farewell to Steven Deobald
Gemini Links 30/08/2025: Low Tech and Hunchbin 1.0.6
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, August 29, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, August 29, 2025
Financiers and Sponsors of the Slop Hype (Pyramid Scheme Waiting to End, Bubble That Will Inevitably Implode)
It's also burning the planet
Slopwatch: Fake Articles About "Linux", Google Helps Ponzi Schemes and Slopfarms in Google News
Slopfarms are a real pain
Gemini Links 29/08/2025: Retiring at 62 and URL Filtering HTTP(S) Proxy on Qubes OS
Links for the day
Links 29/08/2025: Lisa Cook Sues Convicted Felon and Backdoor Mandate in UK Resisted
Links for the day
Links 29/08/2025: Arti 1.5.0, War on Public Health (CDC), and Slop 'Bros' Made to Pay for Their Mass Plagiarism
Links for the day
Representing and Speaking for Animals
If I ever choose to take this matter to tribunal with animals-centric NGOs on my side, it'll get some press coverage for sure
No, 4Chan is Not Fighting for You by Lawyering Up Against Ofcom (UK)
Don't mistake proto-fascists for people who "fight for you". They don't.
In Many Places in the World Vista 11 "Market Share" is Going Down, Not Up
In some countries Windows is already down to third place or lower
More Microsoft-Connected Layoffs, at Least Third Time This Month! (Also Another Death on Campus)
Microsoft as a "gaming" company is where studios, projects, games, and even developers come to die
Slopwatch: Fake Articles About "Linux", Slop Images in VentureBeat, Linux Foundation Spam Made With LLM Slop and Slop Images
The only relief or upside - if any exists - is that the pace of slop was down a bit this week
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, August 28, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, August 28, 2025
Gemini Links 29/08/2025: Poems, Games, and Java 25 Performance
Links for the day
Links 28/08/2025: Greenland 'Interferences' by US and Skinnerboxes to Get Banned in Korean Schools
Links for the day
Richard Stallman (RMS) Talk in Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress Will be Remote
This past week RMS received lots of accolades online
The Register MS (Run by Microsoft Operatives): Free Software is Putin, Hence Evil and Dangerous
The current editor in chief is an American Microsofter, the previous one went to work for Google (US)
Links 28/08/2025: Chatbots Distorting/Fabricating History and Also Driving Suicide
Links for the day
Gemini Links 28/08/2025: Back in Japan and Why "Hacker News" Sucks
Links for the day
A Much-Needed Wake-up Call to Users of Wordpress.com, Blogspot, Substack and All Those Other Outsourced (and Centralised) Platforms
There are several lessons in there
The UEFI 9/11 - Part II - Campaign of Censorship and Defamation Against Critics
In dictatorships, humour serves an important role. It's tragic.
Open Source Initiative (OSI) Resists Software Freedom, Even by Attacking Its Own
The OSI is compromised
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, August 27, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, August 27, 2025
Slopwatch: linuxsecurity.com, Slopfarms in Google News, and More
Some readers of ours end up sending us links that are from slopfarms, not realising those are slopfarms