No matter what the outcome of Huawei's lawsuit against Samsung, Huawei will be the ultimate winner

Huawei announced that it would file intellectual property lawsuits against Samsung in the United States and China, including the Northern District Court of California and the Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court. court. In the lawsuit, Huawei asked Samsung to compensate Huawei for its infringement of intellectual property rights, including high-value patents involving communication technology and software used in Samsung mobile phones.

Huawei’s move, to put it bluntly, personally believes that its symbolic significance is far greater than its practical significance. For Huawei, regardless of the outcome of this move, Huawei will be the ultimate winner. This lawsuit not only demonstrates Huawei's strong accumulation of patented technologies, but also expresses its ambition to monetize patents.

But more importantly, it has done a huge brand marketing promotion for the Huawei smartphone brand, which has been a huge help in improving the brand image of Huawei smartphones. Judging from the results of past patent lawsuits in the industry: the outcome of this lawsuit is more likely to be that Huawei and Samsung will reconcile and reach a cross-licensing agreement.

1. Huawei and Samsung are most likely to settle this patent lawsuit

According to Tencent Technology reports: This lawsuit involves 4G standard patents and patents related to smartphone functions. In view of Huawei's 28 years of communication accumulation in communication technology, and Huawei's important position in core patents such as 4G. Many onlookers believe that Samsung will definitely lose this time and will pay the money obediently. Many core fans of Huawei use the results of the patent war between Samsung and Apple as well as the patent cross-licensing results reached by Huawei and Apple not long ago to conclude that Samsung will lose.

However, this conclusion may be a bit wishful thinking among Huawei fans. It is true that Huawei has a strong foundation in patent accumulation, but Samsung's patent accumulation is even worse than Huawei. In fact, in terms of patent holdings and ITE core patent holdings, Samsung can be said to have surpassed Huawei in almost all aspects.

In China: According to data released by Huawei itself, by the end of 2015, Huawei had applied for a total of 52,550 Chinese patents; and for Samsung, the "Internet Technology Innovation Patent Observation Report" organized by the Peking University Internet Law Center (2015)" relevant data shows that Samsung Group ranks first in the number of patent applications in China, reaching 54,991.

In the United States: According to data released by the United States Patent and Trademark Office USPTO, Samsung obtained 5,072 US patents in 2015, ranking second only to IBM. Huawei ranks 44th, with 800 patent authorizations.

In Europe; according to foreign media TechCrunch, the European Patent Office released patent application data in Europe in 2014. Among them, Samsung Electronics has submitted a total of 2,541 patent applications in Europe, ranking first. Huawei ranks fifth, with a total of 1,600 patents submitted.

As for LTE core patents, it is different from what we always think of Huawei’s strength. In fact, Samsung has slightly surpassed Huawei in the number of LTE core patent licenses.

According to statistics from the National Research Institute of Taiwan in 2014, Samsung and Huawei ranked second and third in LTE core patents, with Samsung owning 652 LTE core patents and Huawei owning 603 LTE core patents.

In 2016, according to the Taiwan Intellectual Property Office under the Ministry of Science and Technology, together with experts in various fields of global mobile communications, based on data from the European Telecommunications Standardization Organization (ETIS) and the US Patent Office USPTO, a ***The latest telecommunications work patent trends compiled for global LTE standardization including 7516 standard essential patents show: In the past two years, Samsung has continuously occupied the first place in the world in 4G LTE core standard essential patents, ***954 standard essential patents, Occupying 12.7% of the 4G LTE core standard essential patent share, Huawei ranked seventh with only 5.3%.

We can see from the above data that Huawei does not actually have an advantage over Samsung in terms of patent holdings.

In the face of Huawei's patent lawsuit, Samsung has stated in its statement that "it will comprehensively evaluate this lawsuit and take appropriate measures to defend Samsung's commercial interests." In view of the long-term anxiety and persistence of patent litigation, The past and final settlement ended, so I personally believe that this time the patent litigation between Huawei and Samsung is still mostly likely to be settled.

2. Huawei sued Samsung for patent infringement, a massive brand marketing campaign

As mentioned above, we have seen that compared to Samsung, Huawei has a smaller number of patent holdings. In fact, it does not have an advantage, and it may not be able to obtain benefits, and it is time-consuming and labor-intensive. So why does Huawei not hesitate to break up with Samsung?

Personally, I think that compared to the outcome of the lawsuit, Huawei may be more concerned about the brand image that this lawsuit has created for Huawei. It can be said that Huawei's lawsuit against Samsung for patent infringement is more like a massive brand marketing campaign for the Huawei smartphone brand.

In a previous article, I talked about it. In addition to using the patents in their hands to suppress competitors, monetize, and cooperate, manufacturers can also develop marketing platforms for their own brands.

An obvious trend is that domestic consumers have begun to shift from price worship to technology worship, and domestic manufacturers are more willing to use patents to demonstrate their innovation capabilities, hoping to win over consumers. Respect and love for them. And Huawei is also one of them. In recent years, we can obviously find that in Huawei's self-promotion, Huawei's annual R&D expenditure ratio and patent accumulation are frequently mentioned.

As for Huawei’s consumer business, which has made the Huawei brand well-known to the public and become a popular hot chicken, its leader Yu Chengdong has stated on many occasions that he will surpass Apple and Samsung and become the world’s number one. .

But in fact, although Huawei has made great progress in the past two years, compared with Samsung, there is a huge gap in terms of brand value, smartphone market share, and sales data. It can even be said that Huawei and Samsung Compared with Samsung, it is not in the same heavyweight category.

In terms of brand, if you compare it with the Interbrand Top 100 that Huawei is proud of, you will find that Huawei ranked 88th in 2015, and its brand value increased to US$4.952 billion; while Samsung ranked 88th on this list. However, it ranked seventh in China, with a brand value of US$45.297 billion.

There is a huge gap between the two. When it comes to smartphone sales and share, taking the first quarter of 2016 data as an example, although Huawei's growth rate is strong, Samsung is still far ahead. Data show that in the first quarter of 2016, Samsung sold 81.9 million smartphones and had a market share of 24.5, while Huawei sold 27.5 million units and had a market share of 8.2.

It can be seen that Samsung is still almost three times the size of Huawei, and Samsung has clearly shown a rebound momentum after S6. This is naturally a disadvantage for Huawei, which wants to compete with Samsung.

As for today’s Huawei lawsuit against Samsung, in terms of effect, after a wave of exposure in the global media, most consumers believe that the Huawei smartphone brand has reached a level comparable to Samsung, and they have begun to use patent disputes. male. On the one hand, it also highlights Huawei’s patent innovation advantages. An obvious evidence that can be seen is: on Weibo and WeChat, after this news came out, countless people were proud of the Huawei brand and admired Huawei's strength.

From this perspective, it doesn’t really matter what the outcome of the lawsuit is. In any case, Huawei is the big winner this time. As for smartphone brands, this round of global media exposure has been a huge help in improving Huawei's brand image. Make it more recognized by consumers.

3. Huawei reveals its patent monetization ambitions, and some manufacturers with weak patent accumulation should be vigilant

Of course, Huawei is suing Samsung, although I personally think that its brand marketing component is greater than its patent compensation fee. demand. But it doesn’t mean that this matter has no other significance. In my opinion, Huawei’s move can even be said to be a symbol of the real rise of domestic manufacturers, and should be encouraged. After all, domestic manufacturers have left a mark on patent issues. The inherent impact is: being chased and beaten all the time.

Huawei's ability to dare to sue Samsung over patents reflects the consolidation of Huawei's current position as the leader in domestic smartphones and recognition of its patent efforts over the years.

At the same time, Huawei’s move also exposed its ambition to monetize its patents. As a major patent manufacturer, Huawei has already had demands for patent monetization. As early as 2014, there were rumors in the industry that Huawei had issued legal letters to domestic manufacturers. Although the rumor was later refuted by Huawei. However, in the face of "patent use", Huawei also made the following statement: "Huawei has always advocated the protection of intellectual property rights and the paid sharing of technological innovation, and is committed to building a fair and healthy business environment."

With the current mutual authorization between Huawei and Apple and the prosecution of Samsung, it may only be a matter of time before Huawei and domestic manufacturers license patents. Some manufacturers with weak patent accumulation should speed up their patent layout.