An odd team teams up
Prominent carmaker Tesla, Ford, Honda, Daimler, Intel, and MediaTek urged the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to intervene a court ruling that favored Qualcomm in its quest to obligate their customers to sign patent license agreements prior to selling chips to them.
In the eyes of many carmakers and tech industry firms, Qualcomm mocks free trading rules and stifles competition by applying anticompetitive tactics in order to create a monopoly. Consequently driving a tough stand on keeping an exclusive on patents on processors that are dominating price and market structures. But why are carmakers concerned by this?
Computers on Wheels
As tech drives the industry cars are more and more considered to become computers on wheels. The future scenario predicts that cars will connect with high-speed connection through 5G processors to the internet.
Tesla’s strategy is less based on the premise to sell cars and batteries but to benefit greatly from selling digital services at large by connecting their cars to the internet. Everyone is worried that Qualcomm will cement its position.
Source Photo: Business photo created by senivpetro
Patents versus innovation
Since carmakers don’t hold patents on chips related technologies patents will be extremely costly to them and if not acquiring any will make them vulnerable to the free will of mega player Qualcomm when it comes to determining licensing costs. All this leads now in the discussion to what extent anti trust laws protect the consumer or the competitors and suppresses innovation. We certainly will hear more of that because the fight for the rights has just started.
Source Photo: Business photo created by Man photo created by Kamran Aydinov