Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi has secured 2,500 patents from Microsoft through a patent transfer and cross-licensing deal, a Xiaomi senior executive said in Beijing on Wednesday.
As part of the deal with Microsoft, the Beijing smartphone maker bought 1,500 patents from Microsoft and secured the rights to use another 1,000 through cross-licensing, according to Wang Xiang, a senior vice president of Xiaomi.
The patents focus on areas such as wireless communication, cloud computing, big data and multimedia, Wang said. Through the cross-licensing, Xiaomi also allowed Microsoft to use some of its patents such as multimedia, camera, phone design, operating system and video, Wang said.
Wang declined to disclose the amount Xiaomi has paid to secure these patents. The patents will help Xiaomi steer away from potential patent dispute lawsuits, especially overseas. In 2014, Ericsson filed a lawsuit to a court in India, claiming that Xiaomi had infringed its wireless technology patents.
While China's home-grown smartphone makers are chipping away at the dominance of Apple and Samsung in China, leading players such as Xiaomi and Huawei are building up their patent warchest to take on overseas competitors in emerging and developed markets.
In a sign of Chinese smartphone makers' growing clout in the global patent battle, Huawei filed lawsuits last week to courts in both China and the United States against Samsung for alleged patent infringement.
According to tech consultancy Strategy Analytics, Huawei, Oppo and Xiaomi rank as the top three smartphone vendors by shipments in the first quarter this year in China. Globally, Samsung and Apple retained their top two positions in sales during the same period, but are ceding market share to Chinese rivals, according to tech consultancy Gartner.
Under the deal with Microsoft, Xiaomi will begin shipping its mobile phones pre-installed with Microsoft's Office app suite and Skype in September. Xiaomi's co-founder Lei Jun also sits on the board of Kingsoft, which developed the WPS Office suite similar to Microsoft's.
Wang said Microsoft's offering will present more options for users, especially to overseas consumers who are more familiar with the Office suite. Office will be free of charge for Xiaomi users. According to Wang, Xiaomi applied for 3,700 patents in China and other countries in 2015, up from 2,000 in 2014.
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