Huawei and Qualcomm announced a multi-year patent license agreement on October 5 — the first deal between the two technology giants to cover 5G, and a notable truce between companies that sit on opposite sides of the US-China chip divide. The agreement cross-licenses both companies' patent portfolios across 5G, compute, artificial intelligence (AI), and networking, and includes Qualcomm's purchase of certain Huawei patents in the United States. It takes effect once regulators approve it.
What the deal covers
According to Huawei's announcement, the agreement has two parts:
- Cross-licenses to each company's patent portfolios across 5G, compute, AI, and networking technologies.
- A patent purchase, with Qualcomm buying certain Huawei US patents covering compute, AI, networking, and other technologies.
Both companies said the deal reflects licensing practices consistent with FRAND principles — short for "fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory," the standard terms under which patents essential to industry standards like 5G are supposed to be licensed to anyone who needs them.
"This agreement not only demonstrates the value of Huawei's innovations, but also recognizes Qualcomm's foundational contributions to modern communication technologies," said Alan Fan, Huawei's chief intellectual property officer. Fan has credited "decades of sustained investment in fundamental research" for Huawei's licensing position. John Han, who heads Qualcomm's technology licensing business, said the deal "reaffirms industry recognition of Qualcomm's 5G technology leadership."
A $6.9-billion licensing business
The agreement is expected to push the total value of Huawei's patent licensing agreements past $6.9 billion (around ₱432 billion) once completed, Reuters reported. Huawei's licensing business has generated positive revenue since 2021, and the Qualcomm deal follows a similar licensing agreement with HP announced in August.
The relationship between the two companies has come full circle. Huawei made its first licensing payment to Qualcomm back in 2001, when it was still a customer paying for access to foundational mobile technology; it collected its first licensing income a decade later, from Motorola. China Daily reports that Huawei now holds more than 165,000 active granted patents worldwide and has signed over 270 licensing agreements with major manufacturers — and that this is the first revenue-positive deal Huawei has signed with Qualcomm.
Why two rivals called a patent truce
Huawei has leaned hard on its patent portfolio since 2019, when US trade restrictions cut off its access to advanced chips and software and crippled its smartphone business outside China. Licensing lets the company earn from its research even in markets where it cannot sell hardware. For Qualcomm, a cross-license removes litigation risk around 5G — where Huawei contributed heavily to the underlying standards, including polar coding — and the purchase of Huawei's US patents adds to its own portfolio. The two companies have also been here before: they reached a settlement over licensing in 2020, but that arrangement did not extend to 5G — which is what makes the October 5 agreement a first. Light Reading notes the deal is described as broad and multi-year, though neither company disclosed its specific financial terms.
What it means for phones sold in the Philippines
Neither company announced anything Philippine-specific, and the deal changes nothing on store shelves today. But both names are embedded in the phones Filipinos actually buy: Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips power many flagship and midrange models sold here, while Huawei continues to push hardware like the Mate 90 series and its Philippine-market tablets and wearables. Patent royalties are one of the quiet costs baked into every handset's retail price — the same way component costs such as memory are already pushing 2027 phone prices upward. A negotiated patent peace between two of the industry's biggest IP holders is, at minimum, one less source of legal friction feeding into those costs.
