Both the White House and U.S. Trade Representatives have officially weighed in on Qualcomm’s appeals, and the answer is a clear no to Qualcomm. The ban on importing not-yet-approved phones will remain in-place until the matter is resolved between Qualcomm and Broadcom.
Verizon has previously agreed to pay royalties to Broadcom, allowing them to continue to import Qualcomm-based phones. Sprint however appears to continue to work with Qualcomm to find a software workaround that would preclude paying royalties on either end to Broadcom. Carriers not running on CDMA2000, such as AT&T and T-Mobile are generally not affected by this move, since they can use non-Qualcomm chipsets while the ban is resolved.
This still will not affect any handset releases in the near future. Phones such as the Motorola V9m RAZR2, expected to launch within a month, were imported into the United States before the ban took effect.
