Apple and Qualcomm’s Billion-Dollar War Over an $18 Part
1–10 of 143 posts
Re: Apple and Qualcomm’s Billion-Dollar War Over an $18 Part
#2That sounds very expensive. I believe a few years ago the whole SoC with the modem included was something like $20-$25. Qualcomm is basically trying to make Apple and others pay almost as much for the modem as they would pay for the SoC.
This is a tactic Intel itself is also very familiar with, as they've done with their CPU and GPU bundles. I believe in some cases it was even more expensive to buy the CPU alone, so OEMs were coerced into putting an Intel GPU into any device they sold, whether it had another dedicated GPU or not.
I understand at some point it becomes more expensive (but maybe not that much more) to keep those separated, but at the end of the day I believe it was an anti-competitive tactic through which Intel used its CPU monopoly to gain a much larger portion of the GPU market than they would've gained were it not for such bundles and price coercion tactics (and probably a few threats thrown into the mix against the OEMs too, if they dared to use AMD chips).
I wish regulators would catch on to stuff like this early and nip them in the bud, rather than act 10 years later, when the damage is already done, the monopoly is already well established, and the companies are forced to pay a fine of like 5% of what they gained from achieving that monopoly through the anti-competitive tactics.
Re: Apple and Qualcomm’s Billion-Dollar War Over an $18 Part
#3Qualcomm's chips have a very bad computer security track record, and their patent-enforced monopoly status makes this a serious problem. If they would go the way of Flash and Acrobat, this would make the world much better off.
Re: Apple and Qualcomm’s Billion-Dollar War Over an $18 Part
#4That sounds very expensive. I believe a few years ago the whole SoC with the modem included was something like $20-$25. Qualcomm is basically trying to make Apple and others pay almost as much for the modem as they would pay for the SoC. This is a tactic Intel itself is also very familiar with, as they've done with their CPU and GPU bundles. I believe in some cases it was even more expensive to buy the CPU alone, so…
I don't think it is expensive. Qualcomm is doing everyone a service by allowing anyone to buy the chipset from anyone else, just pay a small fee relative to the cost of device. This lets anyone with enough capital to get into the business and start off with good technology.
Apple simply has enough money they apparently have decided they don't have to follow any rules they don't want. How do they handle licensing their patents? The article made no mention.
Re: Apple and Qualcomm’s Billion-Dollar War Over an $18 Part
#5That sounds very expensive. I believe a few years ago the whole SoC with the modem included was something like $20-$25. Qualcomm is basically trying to make Apple and others pay almost as much for the modem as they would pay for the SoC. This is a tactic Intel itself is also very familiar with, as they've done with their CPU and GPU bundles. I believe in some cases it was even more expensive to buy the CPU alone, so…
>I wish regulators would catch on to stuff like this early and nip them in the bud, rather than act 10 years later, when the damage is already done, the monopoly is already well established, and the companies are forced to pay a fine of like 5% of what they gained from achieving that monopoly through the anti-competitive tactics.
Reminds me of Mr. Robot & how Evil Corp still profited from ignoring regulations (which got people killed).
Re: Apple and Qualcomm’s Billion-Dollar War Over an $18 Part
#6That's a very one-sided pro-Qualcomm piece.
The big issue with Qualcomm IP practice is that they don't charge IPR on the modem function, but over the whole device. So put the same modem in a cheap phone, or in an expensive laptop, and the IPR will be very different. This is really charging IPR on a lot of value completely unrelated to the modem.
Historically, the cellular/3GPP world was very phone centric. The specs were for a phone, and the chipset was really the core of the phone. At that time, charging cellular IPR on the device embedding the chipset was reasonable: the device was just a phone, with all the intelligence coming from the chipset.
We're obviously no longer living in such a world. But Qualcomm keeps this practice, as it's very profitable for them and their dominant position let them do it (so far). Apple is mad at this, as most of the value of a smartphone is outside of the modem part nowadays (even more for a PC). Other device makers hate it too, but don't have the muscle to go against QCOM and can't afford alienating them. Europe is looking into it too, and will issue a recommendation that cellular IPR is charge only on the modem subsystem, not the including device (basically, Apple position). It will start as a recommendation, but could become law later on.
So it looks like it's QCOM against everybody else. Considering the money involved, I'm sure that QCOM has a pretty fat budget to push their angle. Hello Bloomberg ;)
Re: Apple and Qualcomm’s Billion-Dollar War Over an $18 Part
#7That's a very one-sided pro-Qualcomm piece. The big issue with Qualcomm IP practice is that they don't charge IPR on the modem function, but over the whole device. So put the same modem in a cheap phone, or in an expensive laptop, and the IPR will be very different. This is really charging IPR on a lot of value completely unrelated to the modem. Historically, the cellular/3GPP world was very phone centric. The specs…
did you read the story? we discuss the very disagreement you reference.
Re: Apple and Qualcomm’s Billion-Dollar War Over an $18 Part
#8Qualcomm's chips have a very bad computer security track record, and their patent-enforced monopoly status makes this a serious problem. If they would go the way of Flash and Acrobat, this would make the world much better off.
Would whoever supplanted them necessarily have a better record? Competition is a fine thing, but doesn't necessarily optimise for every desirable outcome. Usually the optimised factor is price, not quality metrics like security.
Re: Apple and Qualcomm’s Billion-Dollar War Over an $18 Part
#9Qualcomm's chips have a very bad computer security track record, and their patent-enforced monopoly status makes this a serious problem. If they would go the way of Flash and Acrobat, this would make the world much better off.
> Qualcomm's chips have a very bad computer security track record,
Better hope you never see the source of a MediaTek Android kernel code dump. Someone with more malicious intent than me could instantly compromise a boatload of devices.
Re: Apple and Qualcomm’s Billion-Dollar War Over an $18 Part
#10That's a very one-sided pro-Qualcomm piece. The big issue with Qualcomm IP practice is that they don't charge IPR on the modem function, but over the whole device. So put the same modem in a cheap phone, or in an expensive laptop, and the IPR will be very different. This is really charging IPR on a lot of value completely unrelated to the modem. Historically, the cellular/3GPP world was very phone centric. The specs…
did you read the story? we discuss the very disagreement you reference.
From the guidelines: Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."