ABSTRACT:
This note describes a the August 2017 update of the dataset that estimates the Average Cumulative Patent Royalty Yield paid in the mobile phone value chain— the sum total of patent royalty payments earned by licensors, divided by the total value of mobile phones shipped. In this update, we identify, with varying degrees of accuracy, 39 potential licensors in the smartphone value chain. We find that, of these, only 29 charged royalties in 2016, running from a low of $1.6 million to a high of $7.7 billion and summing almost $14.2 billion in total. Because in 2016 original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) sold 1.97 billion mobile phones for $425.1 billion, the Average Cumulative Royalty Yield was 3.3 percent or $7.2 per phone. If we exclude feature phones sales from the calculation and assume that only smartphones yield patent licensing revenues, the Average Cumulative Royalty Yield would be 3.4 percent or $9.6 per smartphone. A sensitivity analysis indicates that, even under a set of generous assumptions, an upper bound estimate of the Average Cumulative Royalty Yield on a smartphone did not exceed 5.6 percent in 2016. We invite users of this dataset to share their ideas, suggestions, and corrections with us so that they may be potentially included in future versions.
Read the paper: A New Dataset on Mobile Phone Patent License Royalties
Download the August 2017 dataset.
Read the original 2016 paper.
Download the September 2016 dataset.
