Mannerisms

“We want to make great chips. We’re not like some of our competitors who want to charge royalties to everyone’, said McGregor, “but we want a level playing field and there’s one company out there which uses royalties and unfair trading practices to keep people out of the market.”

McGregor added: “Our patent portfolio is valued as the fifth most valuable patent portfolio in the world, but we don’t tell our customers that, if they buy our chips, they’ll pay a different royalty rate on our IP.”

Broadcom and Qualcomm have been engaged in lengthy legal battles which recently persuaded the US government to ban handsets using Qualcomm chips from being sold in the US.

Broadcom found a formula to get round that ban because it hurt some of their customers. But those same customers are, said McGregor, urging him to keep going after Qualcomm for its behaviour in regards to royalties.

“Our competitor in San Diego makes a percentage royalty on a handset”, said McGregor, “it’s the same percentage if you make the handset out of plastic or out of platinum.”

When the wireless telecoms industry adopted Qualcomm’s CDMA standard as the 3G cellular standard, Qualcomm undertook that it would license its technology on reasonable terms. It is the terms on which Qualcomm is now trying to license its technology which are now creating resentment across the industry.