Japanese handset vendors' poor IPR portfolio makes them less competitive on international arena

While reading ABI Research's insight by Andy Bae, I came across of a very interesting piece of information that reveals a disturbing paradox about the Japanese handset vendors. They are well known for their technological advancements in handsets (half of a credit for that should go to Japanese operators as well), but yet their R&D programs prove to be ineffective compared to Western companies. For example, Qualcomm and Nokia hold more IPR than all of Japan's 11 vendors. As Andy Bae states, "this is especially the case in the WCDMA standard - 560 patents by Qualcomm, 280 by Nokia versus the combined total of Japanese vendors of 270 cases." Clearly, Japanese vendors must intensify their R&D efforts in order to become competitive on a global scale.