The fact it has not been doing so and might be even now paying at a reduced rate has caused problems for Qualcomm’s bottom line. The announcement did not mention the amount per phone and other terms nor was there any mention of back pay or further deals in the future.

For those who came in late, Qualcomm was walloped by the Chinese government for asking too much cash for its chip designs and using the fact that it was the market leader to police its licences’ use.

Since then Qualcomm has been setting relations straight with a number of OEMs in China, including Xiaomi, Huawei, ZTE and TCL. However the scrap did enable MediaTek to gain traction internationally and Huawei started making more use of their in-house Kirin processors.

Then the fact that Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810 flagship processor got a little warm did not help matters. The Snapdragon 820 processor however sets that fiasco in the past and if Qualcomm can sort out its Chinese market then it could do very well with it.