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How Qualcomm shook down the cell phone industry for almost 20 years

arstechnica.com

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Re: How Qualcomm shook down the cell phone industry for almost 20 years

#51

Post by ansible »

macspoofing wrote: post #40
guardiangod wrote: post #19

As a former worker at Blackberry(RIM) cellular chip division (hello fellow RCT-ees), this article explains so much it physically hurts me. RIM pushed hard to develop its own chip 3G/4G chips because Qualcomm absolutely strangled the company with its licensing cost/terms. They pretty much demanded a separate cellular R&D team (QCT) that duplicates half the effort. All CDMA based phones must contain chips from QCT beca…

Did they really 'strangle the company'? Blackberry had a meteroic rise and they collapsed because of iPhone and (later) Android.

That's a good question. Yes, margins are low for most phones, most of the time. And cheaper modem chipsets would help with that. But if everyone had cheaper chipsets... then the phones would be a little cheaper. But I don't think that would have changed the competitive landscape at that time.

There was a fundamental change in phone capability and interaction that really shifted the market, and made new winners and losers.

Re: How Qualcomm shook down the cell phone industry for almost 20 years

#52

Post by protomyth »

macspoofing wrote: post #40
guardiangod wrote: post #19

As a former worker at Blackberry(RIM) cellular chip division (hello fellow RCT-ees), this article explains so much it physically hurts me. RIM pushed hard to develop its own chip 3G/4G chips because Qualcomm absolutely strangled the company with its licensing cost/terms. They pretty much demanded a separate cellular R&D team (QCT) that duplicates half the effort. All CDMA based phones must contain chips from QCT beca…

Did they really 'strangle the company'? Blackberry had a meteroic rise and they collapsed because of iPhone and (later) Android.

After reading about it particularly "Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry", I think guardiangod is correct, but also Verizon and, to a much lesser extent, the whole stock dating scandal. If Verizon hadn't been so gun-ho for an iPhone killer, Blackberry would probably of got to something like the Passport a whole lot faster. They needed to stay in their lane for a bit longer. Their market cap actually hit its max a year after the iPhone.

I wouldn't call RIM / Blackberry a meteroic rise. They start in the mid 90's and built up the products in a pretty smart way with each following the next until the total shift of the Storm.

Re: How Qualcomm shook down the cell phone industry for almost 20 years

#53

Post by pier25 »

conception wrote: post #32
pier25 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't matter, Apple is the only supplier of iOS apps and forbids any competition here.

LG is the only supplier of apps for their TVs and forbids any competition there.

So?

Re: How Qualcomm shook down the cell phone industry for almost 20 years

#54

Post by pier25 »

xwdv wrote: post #42
pier25 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't matter, Apple is the only supplier of iOS apps and forbids any competition here.

This poor understanding of what a monopoly is on your part is a testament to how uncommon true monopolies have become thanks to modern regulation.

Time will tell.

Re: How Qualcomm shook down the cell phone industry for almost 20 years

#55

Post by mason55 »

binarybits wrote: post #33
CharlesW wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's like saying McDonald's has a monopoly on what food appears on their menu. It's non-sensical as a complaint.

The question is how you want to characterize an iPhone. If the phone is Apple's property that they're letting you use, then Apple's app store restrictions are analogous to McDonalds deciding what going on their menu. If the iPhone is a product that you bought from Apple, then Apple's app store policies are equivalent to GE selling me an oven that will only cook food purchased from GE's grocery store. Luckily, oven te…

But none of those things are a monopoly. A GE oven that only cooks GE food isn’t a monopoly, it’s just a shitty oven.

Plus, monopolies aren’t illegal, using them anti-competitively is. So the analogy would be GE buying or putting out of business all the other oven makers, then saying you can only cook GE food in a GE oven.

Re: How Qualcomm shook down the cell phone industry for almost 20 years

#56

Post by protomyth »

bsder wrote: post #37
pier25 wrote: post #34

So why did Apple decide to make its own SOCs but not its own modem chips? I would expect making CPUs and GPUs to be a lot more difficult than modems, no?

Apple bought SiByte who were a lot of ex-DEC VLSI design engineers. So, "Apple" designing a CPU is technically correct, but its a design team from elsewhere.

Apple has acquired a lot of chip design talent, but its an Apple design not one bought from elsewhere.

Re: How Qualcomm shook down the cell phone industry for almost 20 years

#57

Post by ansible »

derefr wrote: post #38
wmf wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CPU design and RF stuff are both very difficult; I wouldn't assume one way or the other. I wonder if knowledge of CPU design is more widely dispersed (e.g. you can hire ex-Intel, ex-AMD, ex-IBM people) than cellular radios where the only (working) ones seem to be made by Qualcomm.

> cellular radios where the only (working) ones seem to be made by Qualcomm. Seems strange, given that plenty of manufacturers are making the radios on the other side of the cellular connection. Can't, say, Ericsson take the radios in their cell towers or picocells, redo their tape-outs for phone scale, and end up with a workable mobile radio?

> Can't, say, Ericsson take the radios in their cell towers or picocells, redo their tape-outs for phone scale, and end up with a workable mobile radio?

Generally speaking, no.

Sometimes in the base stations, you'll find FPGA and such, which are super expensive.

The even bigger issue is that you're implementing the other side of the over-the-air protocol, and a whole bunch more stuff too (signaling in the carrier's network). Whereas the modem in a phone is designed to talk to just a single system.

Also, the protocols are designed to be asymmetric. The cell station is fixed, but has relatively unlimited size and power constraints compared to the phone. They also have to talk to multiple phones simultaneously, and manage their access to the network.

Re: How Qualcomm shook down the cell phone industry for almost 20 years

#58

Post by protomyth »

pier25 wrote: post #47
bsder wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple bought SiByte who were a lot of ex-DEC VLSI design engineers. So, "Apple" designing a CPU is technically correct, but its a design team from elsewhere.

AFAIK Apple designs and manufactures its SOCs but keeps using ARM designed CPUs. Not sure about the GPUs though. Edit: Protomyth below is correct. Apple licenses the architecture from ARM but designs its custom chips. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/new-arm-designs-help-samsu... The chips themselves are manufactured by TSMC.

I am pretty sure the A-series is not an ARM supplied core these days.

Re: How Qualcomm shook down the cell phone industry for almost 20 years

#59

Post by wil421 »

sundvor wrote: post #6
Veen wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In which market does Apple have a monopoly?

App Store, in their ios ecosystem.

Jeep doesn’t allow me to install my own apps on Uconnect. I guess they are a monopoly. Sirius, Apple, and Android are 3rd party products that are allowed on Uconnect but not my own.

Re: How Qualcomm shook down the cell phone industry for almost 20 years

#60

Post by AnthonyMouse »

village-idiot wrote: post #29
sundvor wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

App Store, in their ios ecosystem.

That’s like complaining that IKEA has a monopoly within IKEA stores.

> That’s like complaining that IKEA has a monopoly within IKEA stores.

I feel like the fact that only Apple makes iOS devices is what's confusing people.

Suppose that Tesla is the only company that makes electric cars and also the only company that has any electric car charging ports. (This is a hypothetical; in practice other companies offer both electric cars and charging ports.)

They don't have a monopoly on cars -- you can go buy a Volkswagen diesel if you like, and "electric cars" isn't necessarily a separate market than "cars" at the time of purchase. But once you have an electric car, they do have a monopoly on charging ports, which is a separate market because you can't run your electric car on petroleum.

This is easier to see if you add another electric car company but not another electric car charging company. So you go buy your Nissan Leaf but you still have to use a Tesla charging port with it. Clearly a monopoly on charging ports. But still the exact same charging port monopoly when they're the only company making electric cars.

You can have a monopoly on iOS app stores even if you're the only company that makes iOS devices. Having fewer competitors in the other market doesn't make you less of a monopoly. Even the fact that they compete there at all -- if Amazon was the only company with an iOS app store, they would have a monopoly on iOS app distribution even if they don't even make iOS devices.

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