Following up, the Korean Federal Trade Commission has ruled that Qualcomm will have to share its proprietary software with local handset manufacturers and software developers at no charge following years of fees that it charged in order to allow companies to develop software and handsets with its chipsets as the target platform. The new terms will go into effect between a timeline of two to ten months from the date of the ruling.
The ruling is expected to cut off a source of additional profit for the chipset and platform developer, as keeping its software proprietary forced manufacturers and developers to depend on Qualcomm without the prospect of third-party tool availability.
