From Wall Street’s point of view, Qualcomm is a besieged patent empire, embroiled in legal battles all over the world and wobbling along on its glories of yesteryore. And while, it’s true, the company’s legal department is fully occupied in all these regions, the technology development side continues its work apace on the next generation of communications — 5G.
Qualcomm doesn’t just make money on old patents. It makes new ones. All the time. In fact, that’s the guiding principle of its portfolio licensing architecture. When a customer licenses the entire portfolio, it gets access to the new ones as they come along as well as all the old ones. Patents aren’t licensed by the piece at big portfolio companies. There are just too many, and they’re being updated all the time.
Nowhere was this nexus of developmental energy more in evidence this week than at Mobile World Congress 2019, where Qualcomm made an avalanche of announcements in all facets of future communications technology.
The company showed a reference design — intended to demonstrate what customers can do with Qualcomm’s latest components — for fixed wireless broadband customer premise equipment that includes the new low and high bands needed for 5G. In the future, such devices will help deliver 5G experiences to dense indoor locations. The components include the just-announced…
