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For those of you who are unfamiliar with the cell phone chip wards, we’ll give you the skinny. Qualcomm was importing chips that were under patent by another chip maker, Broadcom. To keep everything fair, the U.S. put a ban on the importing of these chips. Some thought that the ban was bad for consumers. Still, Qualcomm fought, and in September the ban was temporarily lifted. Well, Qualcomm was hit with a permanent injunction on any of their products containing those chips.
The ruling is retroactive, which does not bode well at all for Qualcomm. It “means that the company can’t even provide service or technical support for ‘686 products already on the market.” That’s a real shame for people who bought these phones from September through December.
Verizon customers shouldn’t have too much of a problem, since they have a licensing deal with Broadcom. However, a similar deal with Qualcomm appears to be off the table. Broadcom is holding all the chips now. We’d like to see how they’re going to play this, and how it will affect U.S. consumers who have phones containing these chips.
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