Mobile DRM levy hits operators where it hurts

The Register has written an article focussing on the effect of the recently announced royalty payments for the OMA standard. Although innocuous at an individual level, across the industry the royalties will rake in billions of dollars.

“Although the patent royalties could hit both handset makers and operators, the payment of the $1 device charge is to be made by the company selling its handsets directly to the public, in many cases the operator rather than the handset supplier.

With major Cellcos like Vodafone using OMA to provide protection for content on its Live! system, this means that one per cent of Live! content revenues could be up for grabs just as every competitor that Vodafone has is trying to launch a similar service. Over the next few years some 2 billion phones are likely to end up with DRM on them, making a basic handset revenue of $2bn among these patent holders with out the charges for service revenues, which we would expect to be higher.”

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