Earlier today, the U.S. Trade Commission announced a decision to ban U.S. imports of some phones containing Qualcomm semiconductors, a move that will almost certainly strike a big blow to the industry, at large. The decision comes in the wake of a lawsuit by circuit manufacturer, Broadcom, alleging that Qualcom's chips infringed on copyrights.

Who does this ruling affect? Well, just about everyone, including a huge number of manufacturers, and most of the carriers. AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile all have handsets that use Qualcomm chips--the move also effectively bans some 80-percent of handsets currently manufactured for use with Verizon.

Qualcomm issued the following statement, shortly after the ruling:

[...]Although all of the commissioners agreed that a disruption in the supply of EV-DO and WCDMA handsets would negatively impact the public interest and public safety, the remedy fashioned by the majority does not protect the public interest or public safety. Qualcomm will ask the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals to stay enforcement of the ITC's order and ask the President to veto the ITC's decision. Qualcomm maintains that Broadcom's patent is invalid and not infringed.

[...]"While there is no immediate disruption to Qualcomm's ability to import chips, this decision does immediately affect third parties who were not even permitted to appear in the infringement proceeding," said Dr. Paul E. Jacobs, CEO of Qualcomm.

We put the call out to a few other industry leaders, in order to gauge their reaction to the landmark ruling.

AT&T:

This won't affect the iPhone launch. The iPhone is not a 3G-based phone, and doesn't use a Qualcomm chipset. Qualcomm WCDMA chipsets are in the majority of AT&T's 3G-based phones. The order, obviously, won't affect current models. We just received the decision, and we're digesting it. We will be closely studying the ruling and considering all of our options.

HTC:

So far, no impact to us from the decision. We use a lot of Qualcomm chipsets in our products but have a couple of contingencies in place to keep things rolling.

Motorola:

As we have said previously, this is a dispute between Broadcom and Qualcomm and we expect both companies to act in the best interests of their customers and the industry to resolve this matter as quickly as possible. We already have been working to address this potential outcome to mitigate its impact on our business.

The ITC decision does not impact our currently shipping handsets. Further, we want to emphasize that we do not anticipate any supply problems for our CDMA EV-DO-enabled handsets during the second quarter.

Samsung:

We've been working with our suppliers and customers. We're going to have a continued and uninterrupted supply of current and future models. We've been working with the suppliers to make sure that this isn't going to cause a hiccup. We're not planning to oppose the ruling. We've already been doing the work to re-engineer phones. We've been actively working with the suppliers to make sure the supply remained uninterrupted.

Sprint:

Everything of ours is pretty much Qualcomm. Everything remains business as usual for sales, service and support of our EV-DO handsets.

Verizon:

Most of the phones the majority of the phones we send are broadband, they contain the Qualcomm chipsets. This is a really bad order for the entire industry and for wireless consumers we're going to seek a presidential veto and an immediate stay of the order. This does not affect current models and it has no immediate impact on our ability to sell all our devices and services the order doesn't become final for 60 days.

It grandfathers models that were being imported for sale to the general public. We have to have been selling them on June 7th [[This mean that Phone's in the Verizon Labs are also being blocked]].

Our plan right now is to really focus on the presidential veto and a stay of this order.[...]It's going to freeze innovation, it's bad for consumers, it's also legally unsound. The wireless carriers and the manufacturers, we weren't a party to the liability portion of this. We were never accused of any infringement or found to infringe and we're being punished, and our constitutional rights of due process are being violated because we were never accused of anything.

Special thanks to Sascha Segan. Go check out his opinion piece, over at PCMag.com. He's not happy at all.

[Via PC Mag]