Context: It’s been almost a year since Nokia completed its smartphone patent license renewal cycle with respect to the seven largest licensees of cellular standard-essential patents (SEPs) (February 8, 2024 ip fray article). One company that was not previously named as a Nokia licensee is Transsion, a Chinese multi-brand company that is the undisputed volume leader in the African mobile device market. Two weeks ago, it turned out that Transsion settled with Qualcomm as an Indian patent infringement lawsuit was withdrawn (January 16, 2025 ip fray article). There was no serious doubt, and the settlement has meanwhile been corroborated by a procedural order by the Unified Patent Court (UPC) dated January 28, 2025 (PDF).
What’s new: Transsion has recently also signed a license agreement with Nokia, as revealed by Nokia’s financial report for the fourth quarter of 2024. Like most SEP license agreements that Nokia (and other industry players) enter into, this one was struck without having to resort to litigation as a LinkedIn post by Nokia’s chief licensing officer for wireless technologies, Susanna Martikainen, confirms.
Direct impact & wider ramifications: The new president of Nokia Technologies (the licensing division), Patrik Hammarén (January 22, 2025 ip fray article), has considerable experience in working out commercial solutions with Chinese companies. Nokia has already signed up two large Chinese automakers (December 17, 2024 ip fray article). A few months ago, the company announced a first license agreement with a Chinese payment terminal maker (September 23, 2024 ip fray article).
There is nothing to add other than the relevant passage of Nokia’s earnings release:
Nokia Technologies had an extremely active quarter. We signed a deal with Transsion, a previously unlicensed mobile devices vendor, along with multimedia deals with HP [October 30, 2024 ip fray article] and Samsung [January 15, 2025 ip fray article], as well as many other smaller deals. Our annual net sales run-rate increased to approximately between EUR 1.3 and 1.4 billion in Q4, progressing towards our mid-term EUR 1.4 to 1.5 billion target.