Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 314 posts

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

#171

Post by scarface74 »

wmf wrote: post #35
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?

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.

And you can also buy the company that designed PowerPC chips better than IBM and Motorola could back in the day and have them kickstart designing custom ARM chips.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_Technology

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

#172

Post by scarface74 »

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…

So in that case, Microsoft with the XBox, Sony, and Nintendo are “monopolies” since you can’t sell a digital or physical game without paying them.

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

#173

Post by scarface74 »

sundvor wrote: post #146
cabaalis wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe OP is referring to the recent ruling allowing an antitrust lawsuit against Apple's app store to proceed. Not necessarily declared a monopoly yet, but also not declared not one. https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/13/18617727/apple-v-pepper-a...

Yes. My point was that they are exhibiting the same type of behaviour that they're accusing Qualcomm of, and that's why I said that's the pot calling the kettle black; they are more than happy to embrace the same self serving behaviour when it serves them . The app store paid out $34bn to devs last year, so a very simple and probably naive calculation of 34/.7*.3 tells me they pocketed around ~$14.5bn in revenue from…

You realize those “parental control apps” gave a third party complete access to your child’s phone and were able to intercept all of your cbild’s communication.

Do you think parents were aware of that? Are you okay with that? If you want to control your child’s phone, you are free to use MDM software where you control provisioning and the profiles.

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

#174

Post by scarface74 »

tracker1 wrote: post #88
Veen wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you mean Apple owns and runs an App Store, then yes, but that’s not a monopoly. It’s just a store that they control. Would you say that their physical stores are a monopoly that they abuse by not selling samsung phones?

If I want to sell an app to users on iOS, and those users want my app, there's no way for them to get it without Apple. That's a vertical market monopoly. And even if it doesn't qualify as a monopoly in your mind, it can still run afoul of anti-trust law.

You could say the same about console makers. They have been doing the same thing since the 80s....

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

#175

Post by makapuf »

School-Cotton wrote: post #153
acdha wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument has held progressively less weight since 1995, when Intel released the Pentium Pro and started the precedent of deciding x86 CISC instructions into the micro-ops which are actually executed. ARM is a respectable architecture and Apple has shipped some very competitive chips but it’s not like Intel’s engineers have been in a coma for forty years.

All the moving pieces in Intel x86-to-RISC decoding (instruction decoder, μop cache, Microcode Sequencer ROM...) use up a non-trivial amount of silicon and power.

I'm not sure. If that were the case why wouldn't intel expose a native, better fit to uops instruction set in addition to the legacy, difficult to decode one and let the apps use the newer ones (or the subset of existing ones which do map well)?

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

#176

Post by sigstoat »

village-idiot wrote: post #107
sigstoat wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

last i looked that requires a couple hundred dollar per year special developer account from apple, with special checks to make sure you're actually a business doing it for business reasons. and they still sign your apps, they just do it automatically, i think.

So? You can still side load. Developers do it all the time. The approval process is only for distributing your private app to hundreds of people using Apple’s servers and hardware.

look, buddy, i'm with you on the monopoly issue, but this whole side loading thing is bullshit. i don't think these mechanisms work the way you think they do, and they're certainly not reasonable for even expert users to keep an app up to date on their device. it just isn't legally relevant.

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

#177

Post by frosted-flakes »

MrMorden wrote: post #127
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.

The problem with the Passport was that it didn't have the Google store. 95% of developers couldn't be bothered to submit their applications to Amazon.

Not by default it didn't, but if you had any sort of technical know-how it was fairly easy to sideload it on.

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

#178

Post by gumby »

mbreese wrote: post #91
aey wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I 100% agree with you but those were among the abusive terms

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

#179

Post by makapuf »

foobarian wrote: post #144
systemBuilder wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, handoff design is more difficult than picking and tuning ALU designs from the 70 years of CPU design history, then generating the control circuitry. A lack of design-for-handoff OF ANY SORT is why Intel failed with 802.16. Qualcomm invented soft handoff which made frequency reuse 3x more efficient, and it made CDMA possible. People are pretty ignorant that due to shadow fading you have to keep 3 or more MACIDs ac…

It seems that there is a lot of focus on Qualcomm's strong-arm monopoly tactics. But that seems to me to work exactly as designed - patents are intended to literally grant a temporary monopoly to reward the holder for the expensive research work that otherwise wouldn't have happened. If Qualcomm won't license someone a patent for whatever reason, that is up to them. Clearly if customers are deciding to pay the price,…

I agree. If they alone in the world can make good modems well they can charge a lot for it. 3% seems ok with the value I get from the the modem compared to the whole phone. If not the market will price them out. The issue is not with clients but other suppliers (or lack theeeof). The issue is patents. And enforcing frand policies. Again if no other team in the world can deliver what they do why should they charge less ? If they violated agreements it's not even an systemic issue with patents. Am I missing something ?

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

#180

Post by RobDrk »

asr wrote: post #161
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 t…

it was filed when the last administration was on the way out but still had dem majority. also see the dissent written by one of the commissioner at that time. https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/cases/170117qualc... i feel the ars article is a hit job as is the PR from Q.
Post reply on HN