Anil Ambani, Jacobs refuse to budge on royalties

An eight-hour meeting between Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs and Reliance Communications Chairman Anil Ambani over royalties remained inconclusive here today, as each party refused to climb down from its stand.

India's biggest CDMA operator Reliance Communications was seeking royalty cuts on handsets shipped into India, while Qualcomm was not ready to reduce the levies.

Jacobs and his team could not have a complete "meeting of minds" with the Reliance team on royalty issues, a source close to the development told Business Standard.

"The royalty issues were acting as a roadblock as the Qualcomm team was not in favour of lowering levies, while Ambani wanted handset prices to be lower than those of GSM phones," he said, adding that Ambani and his team wanted the royalty to at least be on a par with that in Korea and China.

When contacted, the Reliance Communications spokesperson declined to comment.

Today's was one of the longest meetings that Paul Jacobs has sat through in India.

According to sources, the San Diego-based Qualcomm said it was ready to work closely with equipment manufacturers to enable them lower their costs. Jacobs said costs could also be lowered by increasing the volume of chipsets.

Jacobs is on a visit to India after Reliance sought 1800 MHz spectrum to move over to GSM technology.