Nokia gets a big-old payout from Apple ($600+ million)

Apple lost its legal case with Nokia yesterday and is now paying the Finnish phone manufacturer for the privilege of licensing its technology.

Thing is, neither firm disclosed the gory details of this agreement. All we know is that Nokia won and Apple is now paying them an ‘undisclosed’ amount of money each year.

‘The settlement signed on Tuesday related to patents for mobile technology that helped Apple to revolutionise the phone industry in 2007 when it launched the first iPhone,’ reports The Guardian.

As we reported yesterday, Apple will have to pay Nokia a one-off lump sum, which will presumably be done right away.

Apple also has to make royalty payments to Nokia once a year as well. At present, no one really knows how much these figures are – but we can assume they’ll be pretty high.

Still, that hasn’t stopped a Deutsche Bank analyst, Kai Korschelt, having a stab at the figures.

According to Korschelt, Apple will be paying Nokia a one-off lump sum of $608 million, which sounds a lot. But it's still less than the figure ($2.3 billion) Nokia had to pay Qualcomm in 2008.

The royalty figure, says Korschelt, is likely to be one per cent on all iPhones sold each quarter as a license fee. This, at Apple’s current sales rate, would total $138 million a quarter – or $550 million annually.

However, this figure could be as much as five per cent, says The Guardian, before admitting that’s it’s impossible to know for sure as both Nokia and Apple are being extremely tight-lipped about the whole affair.

Nokia’s CEO, Stephen Elop, made the following statement:

‘We are very pleased to have Apple join the growing number of Nokia licensees. This settlement ... enables us to focus on further licensing opportunities in the mobile communications market.’

The Guardian also has a statement from Apple as well, which goes a little something like this:

‘Apple and Nokia have agreed to drop all of our current lawsuits and enter into a licence covering some of each other's patents, but not the majority of the innovations that make the iPhone unique. We're glad to put this behind us and get back to focusing on our respective businesses.’