According to ABI, the global WCDMA royalty revenues were in the region of $2.5 billion in 2006. Total handset royalty revenues are forecast to rise to over $10.0 billion in 2011 based on average cumulative royalty rates ranging from 3.8% to 8.5% depending upon the technologies.

On our analysis, Qualcom, the leader in CDMA/WCDMA technology, alone has collected over $2.75 billion in licensing and royalty fees for the year ending September, 2006. Qualcom estimates wordlwide sales of 290 million CDMA/WCDMA units at $200 average selling price for the full year 2006. 

ABI Research's report "Mobile Handset Royalties: Intellectual Property Rights Analysis for GSM, CDMA, WCDMA, HSDPA, LTE, WiMAX, and UMB Devices" provides in-depth analysis of the royalty issues relating to all major cellular technologies, and offers qualitative analysis on average royalty rates.