Apple and Ericsson end mobile technology war to propel devices forward

The two tech giants have agreed to stop their patent battles so they can create a new smartphone generation together.

Apple Inc and Ericsson AB, the Swedish telecom firm have come to an agreement to settle over alleged patent infringements, so that they can move forward together in improving mobile technology.

This is meant to lay the foundation for the next generation of smartphones that will be considerably faster.

Ericsson is the largest manufacturer of wireless equipment in the world. By the time of the writing of this article, it had not disclosed all the terms of the agreement that was reached between itself and Apple. However, it did state that the settlement includes a type of cross-license that includes the patents owned by both Ericsson and Apple, including the LTE, UMTS and GSM standards used in mobile technology such as smartphones.

Ericsson came to a similar form of mobile technology settlement with Samsung in 2014.

Apple, the second largest smartphone maker in the world after Samsung, holds onto a worldwide market share of 13 percent, according to data from Gartner. It will be making an opening payment to Ericsson as a part of the agreement and this amount will be followed by additional payments in the form of royalties.

That said, the specifics of the financial side of the agreement were not revealed by either company. Still, this was seen as highly appealing to investors, who initially cause the price of Ericsson shares to spike by 5 percent.

The disputes in question between Ericsson and Sony were involving 41 separate patents. They were initially filed by Ericsson in February with regards to some of the mobile technology that was used in both iPads and iPhones. This occurred following Apple’s choice to decline a prior licensing agreement it had been maintaining with Ericsson, as Apple claimed that too much money was being asked for the renewal. This new agreement has set all the patent litigation aside. This type of legal battle is highly common in the mobile tech world as it is estimated that any given smartphone has around 250,000 patents.