主题：【原创】出差归来，接着侃歪屁 wapi 3 -- ragtime

chinese consumers will pay more.

each standard often consists of multiple patentable technologies. for those already patented by someone, usually there are two different solutions:

1. the owners of the patents may get together and neigotiate for how the patent royalties can be collected and distributed among them. for example, dvd and cdma technologies. in many other cases, the patent owners will donate their patents so they are free for the standard users to use. many internet standards out of IETF are this type. sometimes the term "open standard" may be used to describe this situation. i think 802.11 is too but cannot track all the new things put into the standard. also wi-fi organization collects a small amount of fees if the product needs to be wifi certified. usually only if a standard comes out of one company, or a small industry consortium, the former applies. if a standard originated from an international or non-profit organization, chances are the included patentes are free.

never the less, if wapi is accepted, those two entities want to collect a per-chipset fee. of course we do not know how exactly it will be collected and distributed. but traditionally, this kind of fees are in addition to whatever fees that already applies, unless there are new neigotiations and new agreements. so obviously, wapi chips carry more fees.

the fees will typically be collected from manufactures who make wapi chips, who will obviously in turn increase their prices to reflect the fees. so wapi chips will be more expensive than wifi chips, even if we ignore all the additional production costs particular to wapi, such as low volume, r&d, etc. then the next question is who buys those wapi chips? only consumers in china.