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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

#251

Post by jMyles »

ksec wrote: post #246
jMyles wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fine, I added a "perhaps" - my real point was about spying, not prices.

And it is not a single point of failure either. Huawei, Samsung, Mediatek, all have their own modem, as well as Spreatrum ( It has a new name I can't even remember ) , and Xiaomi and Soon, Apple. I know a lot of people hate Qualcomm, but reading the 230 pages of the report I cant help but felt sorry for them.

> I know a lot of people hate Qualcomm, but reading the 230 pages of the report I cant help but felt sorry for them.

They had a special opportunity to take a lead role in protecting the American public from being victimized by criminal behavior within the NSA and they chose to side with the criminals instead of the victims.

What's to feel sorry for?

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

#252

Post by ArnoVW »

ubercow13 wrote: post #206
bitcurious wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Exactly. Or Apple charging a percentage of all in-app purchases.

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

#253

Post by ngold »

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…

>Qualcomm's first weapon against competitors: patent licensing terms requiring customers to pay a royalty on every phone sold—not just phones that contained Qualcomm's wireless chips. This gave Qualcomm an inherent advantage in competition with other chipmakers. If another chipmaker tried to undercut Qualcomm's chips on price, Qualcomm could easily afford to cut the price of its own chips, knowing that the customer would still be paying Qualcomm a hefty patent licensing fee on every phone.

And that was just the start. Fantastic article. Qualcomm, man, just evil business practices that worked for a decade and may continue depending on appeals.

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

#254

Post by ksec »

jMyles wrote: post #251
ksec wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it is not a single point of failure either. Huawei, Samsung, Mediatek, all have their own modem, as well as Spreatrum ( It has a new name I can't even remember ) , and Xiaomi and Soon, Apple. I know a lot of people hate Qualcomm, but reading the 230 pages of the report I cant help but felt sorry for them.

> I know a lot of people hate Qualcomm, but reading the 230 pages of the report I cant help but felt sorry for them. They had a special opportunity to take a lead role in protecting the American public from being victimized by criminal behavior within the NSA and they chose to side with the criminals instead of the victims. What's to feel sorry for?

>They had a special opportunity to take a lead role in protecting the American public from being victimized by criminal behavior within the NSA and they chose to side with the criminals instead of the victims.

And where is that from?

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

#255

Post by Narishma »

fluffything wrote: post #228
gumby wrote: post #167

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.

This +1. Imagine if ECMA script or the ISO C++ standard were covered by patents.

Wasn't C# standardized by both ECMA and ISO while having Microsoft patents?

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

#256

Post by mannykannot »

godzillabrennus wrote: post #189
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel has a track record of selling off assets that end up being valuable in the future.

Basically Intel is trying to give away their market share like IBM did. FYI - IBM handed Microsoft and Intel a big chunk of market share because who would ever want a personal computer...

> IBM handed Microsoft and Intel a big chunk of market share because who would ever want a personal computer...

I believe it was because they needed a PC in a hurry. I have heard that Ken Olsen ridiculed the IBM PC for its crude design, but it was the beginning of the end for DEC.

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

#257

Post by Const-me »

acdha wrote: post #248
Const-me wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Micro-ops aren't RISC. Instructions like VFMADD132PS perform a dozen of math operations, combined with RAM access, yet decode into a single micro-op.

Note that I wasn’t arguing that Intel had switched from one textbook architecture to another: only that it isn’t really an accurate way to discuss modern chips after decades of large teams of smart people have been borrowing each other’s ideas. As to your specific example, ARM has instructions which do complex operations as well. Does that mean it’s not a RISC CPU, or just that some engineers made a pragmatic decisio…

> it isn’t really an accurate way to discuss modern chips

I think it’s still mostly accurate, CISC/RISC is about public API i.e. instruction set. What’s inside a core is implementation details, very interesting ones and can be important for performance, but still.

> ARM has instructions which do complex operations as well

True, but I don’t think they combine these complex math operations with RAM access, in a single instruction?

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

#258

Post by Bakary »

braythwayt wrote: post #236
kumarvvr wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Duopoly is when the two heterogenous companies coöperate to form a monopoly. That was Wintel. A cartel is when a small number of homogenous companies share the market while ostensibly competing with each other, but coöperate to erect barriers to anyone else getting into the market. If Apple and Google block other companies from getting into the mobile device business, they would be a cartel.

Did you start using that spelling from reading the New Yorker?

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

#259

Post by mbreese »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #197
aey wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it cost apple less to build improvement into 5G that would have been licensed to everyone they would have done so. Standards require all participants to license at a FRAND rate. If apple developed 5G IP they would have effectively received a rebate based on the relative impact of their contribution. Qualcomm actually has great execution. You realize 5G is going to put a 1 gigabit network in the palm of your hand?…

> Standards require all participants to license at a FRAND rate. Clearly you didn’t read the article. There’s an entire section about Qualcomm not issuing FRAND licenses.

@aey used to work at Qualcomm according to their resume. So, take that for whatever you think it’s worth.

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

#260

Post by knd775 »

fluffything wrote: post #228
gumby wrote: post #167

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.

This +1. Imagine if ECMA script or the ISO C++ standard were covered by patents.

Well there is that one company that keeps claiming that they own C++ and keeps trying to sue people for using it.
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