Qualcomm is the developer and enabler of foundational technologies for the wireless industry. Our inclusive, flexible licensing and mobile technology transfer program ensures rapid technology advancement and competition across the ecosystem. Through standards development and our broad licensing program, we make our breakthroughs available to licensees who use them to develop products. 

Qualcomm’s licensing and technology transfer program, ecosystem partnerships, and services accelerate the growth of the wireless industry, reduce barriers to entry, encourage competition, level the playing field, and ultimately make the benefits of mobile technology available to more people, more efficiently, and across socio-economic classes.

Qualcomm uses its one-of-a-kind expertise to tackle systems-level engineering problems that can take a decade or more to solve. We achieved this by investing more than $57 billion in research and development since our founding, and over the last decade we have committed approximately 20 percent of our annual revenues to R&D efforts. That commitment has enabled us to invent many of the foundational technologies at the heart of 3G, 4G, and now 5G wireless products and networks.

We don’t keep our inventions – covered by over 130,000 patents and patent applications – to ourselves. We share them in a variety of ways, including through a chip-agnostic licensing program that allows our customers and licensees to build upon our technologies and create amazing products, including smartphones and the growing number of connected devices.

Does our technology transfer program work? In a word, yes. Mobile has not only become the world’s largest technology platform, it has achieved that scale faster than any technology in human history. Today, Qualcomm has hundreds of agreements, and more than 11 billion licensed mobile devices have shipped worldwide. Thanks to the Qualcomm team and collaboration within the entire mobile industry, the next generation of wireless, 5G, debuted a year ahead of schedule. Those numbers and the ever-growing mobile ecosystem support our unwavering belief in the effectiveness of our program to enable competition, both beget and transform industries, and enrich lives everywhere.

We strongly disagree with the ruling. We have filed for a stay and will appeal the ruling.

From its inception, the FTC’s case has been irreparably flawed, lacking any plausible theory of competitive harm.

The evidence at trial from both the industry and renowned economists showed that the FTC’s theory is inconsistent with the real-world facts. Mobile handset makers repeatedly testified that Qualcomm had the best chips available, while even Intel testified that Qualcomm R&D drives the pace of cellular innovation. This is the very essence of competition – innovation and superior products.

Qualcomm proved that its success in the mobile chip industry has been driven by superior technology, skill, and foresight. Contrary to the FTC’s claims, Qualcomm’s licensing model promotes, rather than harms, competition in the mobile chip industry, and more broadly the global mobile industry is thriving and competitive.

The FTC’s case and the court’s ruling defy long-standing antitrust law and ignore the vast weight of real-world evidence presented at trial. The agency demonstrated no harm to competition, while other testimony portrayed a chip market that is thriving, dynamic, and innovative with intense competition, declining prices, improved chip performance, and declining Qualcomm market share. Qualcomm looks forward to the opportunity to be heard on appeal.

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