In a recent move by Qualcomm to gain advantage in the smartphone market, it acquired patents of Palm Inc and iPaq smartphone among the other patents from HP. The total number of patents involved in the acquisition include 1,400 granted patents and pending patent applications from the United States and about 1,000 granted patents and pending patent applications from other countries that include China, England, Germany, Japan and South Korea. However, there was no word on the price that Qualcomm gave for the patents.
Qualcomm is currently the market leader in smartphone chipset technology. The chipset company from San Diego also earns by licensing its patents and with the new acquisition from HP that comprises Palm OS patents, it hopes to extend its income. Prior to being acquired by Qualcomm, Palm Inc was acquired by HP in 2010 along with its WebOS and PalmOS technologies. However, since both of them failed to catch up with Android, HP had to sell off WebOS to LG which is currently using WebOS for its range of smart TVs.
According to Qualcomm’s spokesperson the acquisition of new patents will not result in increased royalty rates for existing Qualcomm licensees.