Huawei announced it has reached a license agreement with a supplier of Volkswagen Group (“Volkswagen”). The agreement includes a license under Huawei’s 4G standard essential patents (SEPs), which covers Volkswagen vehicles equipped with wireless connectivity. This agreement marks Huawei’s largest licensing deal in the automotive industry.
Song Liuping, Chief Legal Officer of Huawei, says: “As an innovative company, we own a leading patent portfolio for wireless technologies, which creates great value for the automotive industry. We are pleased that key players from the automotive industry recognize that value. We believe this license will benefit worldwide consumers with our advanced technology.”
Huawei expects more than 30 million vehicles to be licensed under its patents based on existing license agreements.
Over the past 20 years, Huawei has entered into more than 100 patent license agreements with major global companies across Europe, the United States, Japan, and South Korea. Huawei will continue to bring digital connectivity to more vehicles globally to establish a fully connected, intelligent world.
Earlier this year, Huawei indicated that it will invest $1 billion in researching self-driving and electric-car technologies, accelerating plans to compete with Tesla Inc. and Xiaomi Corp. in the world’s biggest vehicle arena.
Huawei’s auto push however does not include making its cars. Instead, the Chinese tech giant’s long-term strategy is to manufacture key components for intelligent and connected vehicles. According to Huawei, this is the largest deal yet in the automotive industry.
VW has always maintained that the car of the future is fully connected. In doing this VW understands that developing cars is the domain of engineers, but they are working more and more frequently and closely together with software developers and companies such as Huawei in developing cars of the future.
Wesley Diphoko