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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

#161

Post by asr »

RobDrk wrote: post #138

for a counter view on this from yesterdays WSJ https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-courts-dangerous-antitrust-ov... this is by the FTC commissioner (the agency that sued Q)

Very interesting I had not seen this.

Note there are five ftc commissioners. Christine Wilson is one of three republicans. She is unfortunately the one who seems the most trumpian. She misleadingly quotes a filing her own agency made in this op-ed. Because of that, and a few other turns of phrase in here that appear frequently in Qualcomm PR (such as the factually incorrect statement that this case was filed during the Obama administration--it was actually filed under Trump) I'm willing to bet a lot of money Qualcomm wrote this and gave it to her and she signed off on it.

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

#162

Post by kumarvvr »

blunte wrote: post #108

I find great irony in Qualcomm exercising a monopoly position to take a % of total phone price from Apple... since Apple uses its monopoly position to take a % of all app revenue. What Apple thinks would be fair for Qualcomm chip license fees would also be reasonable for App Store fees.

> since Apple uses its monopoly position to take a % of all app revenue

Wait. What are you talking about? They own a platform, others want to use that platform to make money, so Apple is charging fees to use their platform. Where is the monopoly part? Developers have other avenues to sell their software on (Android)

iOS and Android can be classified as a Duopoly though.

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

#163

Post by jdmichal »

mason55 wrote: post #55
binarybits wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's maybe not a monopoly, but it's definitely tying, which is still covered under anti-trust law.

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

#164

Post by hajile »

vkaku wrote: post #139
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'd say Intel should just spin out it's 5G modem team and let a neutral (!Apple) vendor develop it. Samsung should start selling 5G modems in NA as well. I know this stuff isn't going to work in the short term, but this is the sort of choices we need.

Semiaccurate has a rather interesting take here. TL;DR is that modems are very hard to make. Intel's modems were much slower and used much more power for last generation. They ran into issues and don't seem to even have a shippable 5g chip.

https://www.semiaccurate.com/2019/04/16/qualcomm-just-beat-a...

https://www.semiaccurate.com/2019/04/18/why-did-intel-kill-o...

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

#166

Post by selectodude »

School-Cotton wrote: post #151
mschuster91 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? Workable maybe but not power efficient, which is crucial in mobile. That takes years to figure out and is the reason why ARM is so utterly dominant on mobile - there simply is not any Intel x86 offering even close to the power envelope of ARM, even after years of ARM…

Apple phones do not use ARM-designed processors. They just implement the same instruction set. If it’s possible for Apple to develop a mobile processor independently of ARM, why shouldn’t it be possible for Intel?

It is. They made ARM chips for years and still hold a license.

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

#167

Post by gumby »

Part of this comes from the willingness of EE standards bodies to standardize on stuff that is covered by patents.

I was going to say "part of the blame" but it was Qualcomm's choice to take advantage of this. Rambus is another bad guy in this regard.

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

#168

Post by scarface74 »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #122
aey wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, because the value of the 512gb without the qualcomm modem is lower than the 64GB version. Free market pricing is based on demand of the feature not the cost to make it. Qualcomm should be pricing the part at the point where the phone without the qualcomm part is equal value per dollar.

I’m pro patent and copyright law. But they are, by strict definition, government sanctioned monopolies. There ain’t nothing free market about this licensing situation.

It’s even worse in this case. For Qualcomm’s patented IP to be a part of the standard they agreed to license it on FRAND. They didn’t.

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

#169

Post by RetroFuture »

tooltalk wrote: post #141
Analemma_ wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they're adding a fixed amount of value regardless of the phone, and so they should get a fixed sum per phone. This business where they get a percentage of the retail price is ridiculous. Consider the 64 GB iPhone XS selling for $1000 vs the 512 GB one for $1349. Is Qualcomm adding any extra value to the second phone as compared to the first one? Obviously not, so why should they capture any of the extra purchase…

> Consider the 64 GB iPhone XS selling for $1000 vs the 512 GB one for $1349. Sure, first, QCOM licensing fee only applies to the first $400, which is in turn also based on the wholesale, not retail, price from Apple's contract manufacturers. second, without QCOM, Apple wouldn't be able to price the iPhone XS at $1000 (or the iPhone 7 at $550), much less sell nearly as many units. Would you even consider paying $550…

What a ridiculous argument. Without the OLED screen Apple wouldn't be able to charge $1000 for an iPhone either. And I bet those $1000 that not one of apple's customers, not a single one, bought an iPhone instead of an iPod touch because it had a Qualcomm chip in it. Even in later years half of iPhones include an Intel chip not a Qualcomm one; it has made zero difference. 99.9% of customers don't even know Qualcomm is a thing a won't care if you told them.

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

#170

Post by scarface74 »

blunte wrote: post #108

I find great irony in Qualcomm exercising a monopoly position to take a % of total phone price from Apple... since Apple uses its monopoly position to take a % of all app revenue. What Apple thinks would be fair for Qualcomm chip license fees would also be reasonable for App Store fees.

Apple never agreed to FRAND and allow its IP to be part of a standard. The App Store is not required to sell a phone.
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