In case you haven’t heard, Qualcomm has recently filed a lawsuit against Apple in Germany. However it seems that Apple won’t be alone in their legal battle against Qualcomm because according to a report from Bloomberg, it looks like Apple’s manufacturing partners will be joining them in their legal battle against Qualcomm.The report claims that Apple’s manufacturers such as Compal, Hon Hai, Wistron, and Pegatron will be fighting back against Qualcomm. The companies have called Qualcomm’s lawsuit against them, “yet another chapter of Qualcomm’s anticompetitive scheme to dominate modem chip markets, extract supracompetitive royalties, and break its commitments to license its cellular technology on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms.”
For those unfamiliar, Apple does not actually license anything from Qualcomm, but rather its manufacturers do, and in turn Apple pays them for it. According to Don Rosenberg, Qualcomm’s general counsel, “We have a contract with each of these manufacturers and they have all been paying us consistently for 10 years. At the end of the day, it all boils down to this company, Apple, not wanting to pay for the valuable intellectual property that we provide to them and the rest of the industry.”
The company has also tried to get the ITC to ban the import of iPhones into the US, although whether or not that will happen remains to be seen.