How Qualcomm shook down the cell phone industry for almost 20 years • Hacker News Board

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

#201

Post by farahday » Fri, May 31, 2019, 6:04 AM UTC

Uptrenda wrote: post #194

The strangle hold is extremely bad for security, too. All of those Qualcomm chips are designed as black boxes. Nobody knows what kind of horrible flaws are inside them because trying to get at the code is like trying to rob the federal reserve. We need open source 3/4/5G chips, but the R & D cost would be astronomical. If you ever think that TCP/IP is complicated check out the mobile system specs some time! They span…

Where can one take a look at those specs? Are there RFC like things available?

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

#202

Post by joecool1029 » Fri, May 31, 2019, 6:07 AM UTC

frosted-flakes wrote: post #177

MrMorden wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

And it was a super outdated Android runtime that ran like dogshit compared to the native BB10 apps.

Also, if you wanted any sort of Google Play services stuff, you had to have an app on a laptop/desktop to sign all your apk's the same and remove a specific check... and you'd have to do it all over again every time you wanted to update an apk with play services.

Not ideal.

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

#203

Post by guardiangod » Fri, May 31, 2019, 6:13 AM UTC

protomyth wrote: post #69

guardiangod wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't get into details, but basically I agree with you. The Storm...was a product of many compromises. But it's only the start of a series of decisions that...

I dearly wish someone would explain the whole idea of why Blackberry built the Playbook. It seems like a product that was so forced with such a confusing development story.

Not sure how much I can share without giving myself away but...

As an active participant in Playbook's entire development from (near) start to end, there were multiple reasons. They weren't good reasons (most of my colleagues had, eh, concerns which got override,) but they somewhat made sense.

What happened was that multiple teams (internal and external) screwed up, so much so that the thing's internal was completely redesigned half way through development ie. Switched to a completely different SoC .

As another poster noted, their power supplies were great. I still have a couple left around my house. They had to be great partly because of a design oversight....

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

#204

Post by _Codemonkeyism » Fri, May 31, 2019, 6:14 AM UTC

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.

I was a die hard Blackberry (my business phone, using a private iPhone) user, the last one perhaps in the large corporation I've worked for.

Then the Passport launched, LOVED the format, best format ever squared and large screen, beautifully fitting everywhere though being larger, loved the TOUCH keyboard, loved the unified messaging but had NO F* network connection ever. Just could't be called or call others. A second Passport the same. Then one got dropped and it totally broke internally, the "steel frame" didn't help in any way, I assume it contributed due to its weight and momentum.

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

#205

Post by makapuf » Fri, May 31, 2019, 6:29 AM UTC

throwaway2048 wrote: post #183

makapuf wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 les…

The issue with patents is, no other team in the world is even allowed to try.

You are theoretically under frand terms, although not free of charge: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discrimin...

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

#206

Post by ubercow13 » Fri, May 31, 2019, 6:41 AM UTC

bitcurious wrote: post #136

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…

On the other hand, consider a video call on the iPhone XS with v.s. a $50 phone with a low resolution screen. The value of a high bandwidth internet connection is higher when the screen allows you to perceive the difference.

That doesn't seem like a reasonable way to price things. It's like Apple charging companies a percentage of all revenue made using their Macbooks

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

#207

Post by dragonwriter » Fri, May 31, 2019, 6:53 AM UTC

village-idiot wrote: post #186

dragonwriter wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So your point is that there are no high priced smart phones other than Apple, therefore it’s a monopoly? Nope. My point to is neither “there are no high priced smart phones” (there are) not “it’s a monopoly” (I have no position on that question). You should be able to tell that because I say nothing similar to either of those anywhere in the post you are responding to. My point is that the existence of other player…

That's a lot of words that take literally no stance on the issue. You've slowly shifted back to an incredibly vague definition of a market and an incredibly vague definition of what an abusive monopoly is. At this point it's literally impossible to discuss the issue with you, because the definitions have become uselessly broad.

> You've slowly shifted back to an incredibly vague definition of a market and an incredibly vague definition of what an abusive monopoly is

I've had two posts in this thread, both of which take exactly the same position despite your ridiculous misinterpretation in between them; I haven't shifted, slowly or otherwise.

And the definition of market/monopoly is exactly the one used in antitrust law. That may be inconvenient for your desire to argue, but that doesn't change the facts. And I haven't presented any definition of an abusive monopoly, just corrected your claim that a particular definition of monopoly also meant any company that meant it was also an abusive monopoly, noting that “abusive” actually does have meaning.

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

#208

Post by tooltalk » Fri, May 31, 2019, 7:32 AM UTC

RetroFuture wrote: post #169

tooltalk wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 i…

> 99.9% of customers don't even know Qualcomm is a thing a won't care if you told them.

Sure, QCOM is not a marketing/consumer electronic company they way Apple is. Your 99% of consumers buy the iPhones over the iPod because of QCOM's wireless functionality, not because of their branding.

And how many of those 99% of consumers do you think would pay $1000 for a OLED iPhone XS without QCOM's patented wireless features that allow to make phones call or data? Or how many would pay half the price? or even a third? The iPhone 7 without OLED, the most popular selling iPhone in many countries, still costs at least twice as much as comparable iPod Touch and sells multiples of the unit sales of the iPod touch.

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

#209

Post by NotPaidToPost » Fri, May 31, 2019, 7:48 AM UTC

protomyth wrote: post #52

macspoofing wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 l…

My wife got one of the last Blackberries for work a few years back. She had never had one so wanted to try.

Build quality was very poor. Overall experience was very poor.

She ran back to iPhone as soon as she could.

RIM died because their products were poor compared to the competition, it's as simple as that.

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

#210

Post by mschuster91 » Fri, May 31, 2019, 7:53 AM UTC

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?

> If it’s possible for Apple to develop a mobile processor independently of ARM, why shouldn’t it be possible for Intel?

Apple holds an ARM architecture license (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture#Architectural...) and to this day the Apple CPUs are ARM (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A12X).