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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

#91

Post by mbreese »

aey wrote: post #86
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…

I don't think Qualcomm strangled RIM with their 3.4% (peak!) licensing fee on the selling price of the phone. If RIMs profit margin was 3.5% they had bigger problems. Here is the thing. If Apple sold a 2G network based iPhone with a non Qualcomm IP modem, and a 4G iPhone at 2x the price with a Qualcomm modem, which one would make more money for Apple?

Why should the price of the phone matter to Qualcomm? Did they have anything to do with the CPU, screen, memory or battery?

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

#92

Post by village-idiot »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #60
village-idiot wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

But the market isn’t iOS devices, the market is smart phones. And in that market Apple does not have a monopoly.

If you start declaring that the market is the specific store or product, then literally every single product and service is a monopoly begging for state intervention. Can I sue Netflix because as the monopoly holder of the Netflix network they refuse to carry my home made videos? Is Spotify abusing their monopoly over Spotify by refusing to carry my karaoke? Should I be able to sue them in order to bend them to my will?

Of course not. That’s patently ridiculous.

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

#93

Post by frosted-flakes »

ColanR wrote: post #82
frosted-flakes wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Passport was a phenomenal device, and nothing like it has been built since. Large square screen and big touch sensitive keyboard, but yet still super manageable due to its squat height... if there was a modern Android version I'd go for it in a heartbeat. Not great for watching videos, but it would be super for everything else.

I wonder if it's still worth using, despite the outdated OS.

If you don't need many apps and are okay with a web browser that hasn't received updates since 2015 or so, then sure. BB10 can run Android apps with its embedded Android runtime, but it's limited to 4.2 Jellybean (from 2012), so a frustrating experience. The BlackBerry App store is still running, but it's pretty much dead, with zero new development. All apps are free now.

It would make for a great email + basic usage phone, but not for media consumption. And the camera's not great.

I used a BlackBerry Classic that also ran BB10 until December 2017, and I still pick it up from time to time and wish I could still use it. The Classic is unique in that it has three independent input methods, all of which work super well:

1. Touch screen: the BB10 OS is actually designed for touch, with fluid and intuitive gestures. Swipe up to go home, swipe up and to the right to go to the notifications hub (reverse the gesture to just peek), swipe left to pull off a screen layer to go back, swipe down from the top to view the settings pane (standard place for settings in every app).

2. Optical trackpad and hard nav buttons, just like on old BlackBerries. You can fully control the phone without touching the screen (great for when you're wearing thick gloves during winter). Works super well for a mouse pointer in the browser. The trackpad even works reasonably well in Android apps, which weren't designed for it (presumably, it piggy-backed on the accessibility focus stuff).

3. Hardware keyboard: typing experience is great—not necessarily faster, but super precise, and no pop-up keyboard getting in the way. Every app is designed with keyboard shortcuts in mind, and the OS makes discovery super easy, so stuff like [C]omposing an email, scrolling to the [T]op of the page, or scrolling to the [N]ext page in a PDF are single click operations. Modern BlackBerries also have great keyboards, but since they run Android, they have none of the shortcuts (except app shortcuts).

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

#94

Post by closetohome »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #60
village-idiot wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So your argument is that only Apple can make an app store?

I feel like Google might disagree.

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

#95

Post by dragonwriter »

village-idiot wrote: post #92
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

But the market isn’t iOS devices, the market is smart phones. And in that market Apple does not have a monopoly. If you start declaring that the market is the specific store or product, then literally every single product and service is a monopoly begging for state intervention. Can I sue Netflix because as the monopoly holder of the Netflix network they refuse to carry my home made videos? Is Spotify abusing their m…

The market is what products people actually move to and from in response to Apple pricw changes; if there's a segment of buyers and price range in which Apple has pricing power—price changes do not cause such movement—Apple is an antitrust monopoly. Popular descriptive “markets” like “smartphones” often include many isolated submarkets and are not single markets in which competition exists.

A major purpose of brnad marketing is to create such pocket markets.

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

#96

Post by closetohome »

henryfjordan wrote: post #25
Veen wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you should take a moment to review what a monopoly is.

I don't think things are as clear cut as you make them out to be. Apple says nobody can run apps on their phone without handing them a 30% cut. No side-loading, no other stores, nothing. There is very obviously a market for apps that Apple controls completely. Just because there are other app stores for other phones does not mean Apple doesn't have control over the entire market for iPhone apps. Markets can be narrow…

> Markets can be narrowly defined in anti-trust law

I doubt one has ever been defined as narrowly as a single product. The differences between an iPhone and an Android phone are functionally so minimal as to be irrelevant.

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

#98

Post by dev_tty01 »

henryfjordan wrote: post #25
Veen wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you should take a moment to review what a monopoly is.

I don't think things are as clear cut as you make them out to be. Apple says nobody can run apps on their phone without handing them a 30% cut. No side-loading, no other stores, nothing. There is very obviously a market for apps that Apple controls completely. Just because there are other app stores for other phones does not mean Apple doesn't have control over the entire market for iPhone apps. Markets can be narrow…

>Apple says nobody can run apps on their phone without handing them a 30% cut.

False. You can pay for an app/service via the internet (side-pay). The app can be free on the app store. This is what Netflix does. Is it a bit of a hassle? Sure. This is the only part that has an optics problem even though it probably meets any legal thresholds. I do think Apple will get some pressure to make this process easier and that change will happen. Once that is done, there will be even less of an argument here.

From the consumer perspective, if one doesn't like the app store, buy a different brand of phone. There is no monopoly here from a legal or functional perspective.

Has Apple's so called monopoly reduced consumer app selection or pricing? Absolutely not. High quality software has never been more affordable and never has the selection been so incredible. It will be rather easy for Apple to argue that the app store is a net positive for consumers.

For the vast number of non HN users, the app store is a huge win. The whole morass of app selection, installation, update, and developer trust has been solved by the app store. If you are looking for harm to anyone other than the minuscule number of users that care about side loading, it just isn't there. Has everyone forgotten what software purchase, installation, and maintenance looked like a decade ago? What a mess. Fleecing is not the right word for something that has made consumers lives simpler in so many ways.

Some readers of HN might not like Apple's approach, but that doesn't make it illegal. There is just not a way to show substantial (any) harm to consumers. As I said, I think they will probably improve the side-pay options to improve their PR optics and that will be end of it.

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

#99

Post by jsjohnst »

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?

They bought a company that already was a significant player building ARM CPUs, that’s how. There aren’t many (any?) significant baseband companies that are as easily acquirable for Apple to buy.

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

#100

Post by closetohome »

100100010001 wrote: post #22
eadmund wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the case of Apple is more like McDonald's being able to prevent its customers from ever eating food not signed-off on by McDonald's.

How so? Apple can’t stop you from using a different phone.

I think people are confusing mild inconvenience with monopolistic oppression.
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