Resentment Grows Against Qualcomm

In Korea, an anti-sentiment has formed against Qualcomm, a U.S. telecommunication company which retains the rights to CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) typed digital cellular phone technology. The resentment is spreading.
Cellular phone makers of Korea feel that Qualcomm is taking too much profit from Korea and not cooperating with Korean companies.
Recently, Qualcomm denied Korean companies' request to lower the price for the main computer chips in cellular phones which now account for 5.75% of total cellular phone sales in Korea. In Korea, production costs for a cellular phone is approximately 150 dollars. Among that, Qualcomm receives about 60 dollars in technology royalties and parts price: this amounts to 40% of total production costs. Qualcomm has amassed a fortune of more than 1 billion dollars including 270 million dollars in technology royalties and 740 million dollars in parts from Korea, the Korean companies insist.
In world markets, those who have CDMA type cellular phones are accounted to be 18 million people. Among them, 12 million people are Koreans . Therefore, Korean cellular phone makers think that they have had an important effect on Qualcomm's growth. But Qualcomm's attitude toward Korean market is not satisfactory at all, the Korean companies judge.
Recently, the Information and Telecommunication University in Daeduck, the Korean Sillicon Valley, cancelled a ceremony for the 'CDMA Technology Institute' which Qualcomm is planning to found inside the University.
Earlier in October, the Korea Scientific Technology Institute postponed the donation of CDMA mobile telephone facilities worth 250,000 dollars by Qualcomm with no concrete reason.