Huawei's sudden high-profile announcement of a patent fee charged to a Japanese company is actually killing two birds with one stone

Operator Finance Kang Zhao/Wen

On December 22, Huawei announced that it has reached a Wi-Fi 6 patent licensing cooperation with Buffalo in Japan. This is a rare announcement by Huawei to collect patent fees from Japanese companies, why does Huawei do this?

Let's take a look at the specific statement that Huawei collected patent fees this time. Huawei said the partnership with Japan's Buffalo is the first Wi-Fi 6 patent licensing collaboration they have reached overseas. This also shows Huawei's leading position in WiFi6 technology. Buffalo translates to Chinese is buffalo, which is not the same thing as the Chinese bull socket. The English of China Bull Group uses Pinyin, but does not use the English bull of "Bull".

Huawei's high-profile announcement of a patent licensing cooperation with Japan's Buffalo company is definitely for Japanese companies. Beginning in 2019, many Japanese companies replaced Huawei's products in response to the new ban imposed by the United States on Huawei. For example, Japan's SoftBank Group phased out Huawei and ZTE equipment from China as part of its 4G wireless network, and Japan Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) no longer uses Huawei equipment. But that doesn't mean they have nothing to do with Huawei, even if they don't use Huawei's equipment, they need to pay royalties to Huawei.

This incident also shows that Huawei has great potential for patent fees on Wi-Fi 6. Previously, Huawei was very famous in 5G patents, because the international recognition of Huawei in the number of 5G patents in the world, but Wi-Fi 6 is actually a field that can charge a lot of patent fees.

Wi-Fi 6 is the sixth generation of wireless network technology, is the name of the latest Wi-Fi standard, at present, in the world's major countries, Wi-Fi 6 has gradually become the mainstream wireless standard at home, so updating the router has become a demand in the near future, there is a huge market. Japan's Buffalo company happens to be a wireless peripheral equipment manufacturer, which uses Wi-Fi 6 in large quantities, and it takes the lead in paying patent fees to Huawei, which also means that other companies will also pay Wi-Fi 6 patent fees to Huawei in the future.

Ren Zhengfei once said that many of Huawei's intellectual property rights will not be 5G, intellectual property rights are cross-licensed, mutual payment, many large companies in the world are paying Huawei patent fees, but we can not disclose the specific amount.

(Editor-in-Charge: Han Li)