Published: 1/1/14
This article estimates the royalty stack for smartphones on the basis of publicly available information regarding licensing terms. The article presents a “bottom-up” analysis of smartphone royalties by examining the potential royalty burden on the major technologies and components in smartphones. According to the article, “setting aside off-sets such as ‘payments’ made in the form of cross-licenses and patent exhaustion arising from licensed sales by component suppliers,” the “estimate[d] potential patent royalties [are] in excess of $120 on a hypothetical $400 smartphone – which is almost equal to the cost of device’s components.”