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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

#271

Post by [deleted] »

RobDrk wrote: post #180
asr wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#272

Post by ncmncm »

braythwayt wrote: post #265
Bakary wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Which spelling?

Probably the diæresis:

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-curse-of-...

The "æ" is a whole nother thing.

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

#273

Post by asr »

RobDrk wrote: post #180
asr wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I just double-checked and you are right! Filed Jan. 17, 2019. Apologies. For some reason I thought it was filed a few days after Trump became president, but I was mis-remembering.

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

#274

Post by ncmncm »

wmf wrote: post #190
ncmncm wrote: post #159

After reading through the comments quarreling about whether Qualcomm and Apple are acting within their rights to charge monopoly-sized rent where they can, and do, it's hard for me to fathom the depths of confusion Americans are reduced to whenever these topics come up. First and foremost: when you are as big as Qualcomm and Apple are in their respective spheres, you don't need rights. You have POWER, which is far, f…

Offenses against us are entirely ignored... Meanwhile everybody else is saying that US antitrust law is concerned entirely with consumer harm and not with competition. Although in this case the consumer harm seems to be that a >$750 phone costs ~$20 more than it might otherwise.

No, nobody thinks the enforcement is about consumers. Obviously it is on behalf of Apple and, maybe, Intel. But case law says they have to cite costs to consumers, so that is how the complaint reads.

A zillion other companies do the same things, and much worse for "consumers", but are less openly greedy toward other big companies, so are ignored.

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

#275

Post by sangnoir »

ddorian43 wrote: post #232
tooltalk wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is completely tangential, but just wondering if Apple ever came up in discussion.

Apple is the gangster in the hood.

What Apple did to/with that glass foundry that went under was straight-up gangster.

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

#276

Post by newnewpdro »

bsder wrote: post #229
newnewpdro wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and the yield was abysmal . Nit: abysmal means very great/limitless... I suspect you meant dismal here.

You might want to go check a dictionary. "abysmal" can mean very great or limitless DOWNWARD (a la "abyssal")--but that's a secondary definition. However, the primary definition appears to be: "immeasurably low or wretched : extremely poor or bad"--which is the sense in which I used the word.

I did, but apparently my local WordNet definitions in 'dict' failed me:

  abysmal
      adj 1: very great; limitless; "abysmal misery"; "abysmal
             stupidity"
      2: resembling an abyss in depth; so deep as to be unmeasurable;
         "the abyssal depths of the ocean" [syn: {abysmal}, {abyssal},
         {unfathomable}]

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

#277

Post by macspoofing »

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…

I still don't see how in any way Qualcomm was responsible for or contributed to Blackberry's downfall. No doubt that Blackberry sent tons of licensing money to them, but that didn't seem to hold back their crazy growth rate. Neither did it seem to contribute to their downfall.

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

#278

Post by darkpuma »

village-idiot wrote: post #185
darkpuma wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Every company deserves a “monopoly” on their own product," Why?

Because anything else is silly. Am I allowed to release a Ford car because allowing Ford to have a monopoly on Ford cars is unjust?

That's not remotely comparable. Comparable would be asking if you're allowed to release third party components (hardware or software) for Ford cars without asking for Ford's permission.

Obviously hardware third party components without Ford's permission is a well established industry. Nobody questions it, except maybe a few lunatic capitalists like Elon Musk. Even then though, I think people like him keep their head on straight for the most part. They don't do much to facilitate it, but if you started selling compatible hardware components for his cars, I doubt they'd actually consider trying to stop you. (If I'm wrong about that, he's worse than I thought.)

Your supposition is that software components should be a special case, unlike hardware components, where companies have a right to deny anybody else the right to produce components without their permission. I say that's bullshit. They should be legally forbidden from creating products for which third party components can only exist if given permission.

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

#279

Post by tracker1 »

dwaite wrote: post #216
tracker1 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome on iOS still uses Safari's renderer and JS engine.

My understanding is that Google is allowed to use their own renderer and their own Javascript engine - as long as it doesn't do JIT compilation. The ability to mark pages or files as executable is a platform security model thing. Chrome uses WebKit because Google would rather use a WebKit/JSC engine than a slow Blink/V8 engine - especially since Blink is a WebKit fork.

If the alternative is something so slow that nobody would actually use it, does the why really matter that much in practice?

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

#280

Post by braythwayt »

ncmncm wrote: post #272
braythwayt wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which spelling?

Probably the diæresis: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-curse-of-... The "æ" is a whole nother thing.

I was taught about the diaeresis way back in the 1970s in high school English. But I didn’t embrace it until the late 80s when I started writing with a Macintosh, and read “The Mac is Not a Typewriter,” a great little book.

I've always liked typography and graphic design, and I enjoy anachronisms like ligatures, alternate letterforms, drop capitals, visual justification, latin phrases, and so on ad nauseum.

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