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Apple in Advanced Talks to Buy Intel’s Smartphone-Modem Chip Business

wsj.com

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Re: Apple in Advanced Talks to Buy Intel’s Smartphone-Modem Chip Business

#71

Post by pbalau »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #47

Interesting, Apple could do some interesting things with this. The qualcomm situation has resulted in a lot of stagnation in our industry. Companies like Apple are forced to work with them. But given their track record as being aggressive on the IP front (both sides), they have to spend a lot of effort engineering around this stuff. Companies like Intel, Qualcomm, Nokia own a lot of these patents and Apple has been p…

> The reason this is not a feature is that it would add a lot of cost related to patents and IP licensing.

Looking at the numbers here(1), this is not right. They sold ~46 millions iPhones, ~9 millions iPads for a rounded total of ~50 millions devices with a GSM modem. Meanwhile, they "only" sold ~5 millions Macs, which include all the laptops and desktop offerings. Therefore, adding a GSM device to all their mobile offerings would only mean ~10% increase in number of modems (assuming all of those 5 millions macs are actually laptops). I would "blame" the lack of such an offering on the same reason they don't offer many different ports, like headphones, non usbc usb, hdmi etc.

1. https://www.macworld.co.uk/news/apple/apple-financial-result...

Re: Apple in Advanced Talks to Buy Intel’s Smartphone-Modem Chip Business

#72

Post by pbalau »

drbojingle wrote: post #64
tpetry wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theres really no great need in 4g for macbooks? I mean you can activate your wifis hotspot with handoff directly from your macbook without ever touching your iphone.

Assumes you have wifi hotspots in range and an iphone that's configured correctly with adequate battery.

the phone would be a wifi hotspot, sharing it's 4g connection with the laptop, via wifi.

Re: Apple in Advanced Talks to Buy Intel’s Smartphone-Modem Chip Business

#73

Post by jillesvangurp »

pbalau wrote: post #71
jillesvangurp wrote: post #47

Interesting, Apple could do some interesting things with this. The qualcomm situation has resulted in a lot of stagnation in our industry. Companies like Apple are forced to work with them. But given their track record as being aggressive on the IP front (both sides), they have to spend a lot of effort engineering around this stuff. Companies like Intel, Qualcomm, Nokia own a lot of these patents and Apple has been p…

> The reason this is not a feature is that it would add a lot of cost related to patents and IP licensing. Looking at the numbers here(1), this is not right. They sold ~46 millions iPhones, ~9 millions iPads for a rounded total of ~50 millions devices with a GSM modem. Meanwhile, they "only" sold ~5 millions Macs, which include all the laptops and desktop offerings. Therefore, adding a GSM device to all their mobile…

I think you under-appreciate how stupendously expensive it is to settle patent disputes. There's no question that 4G would have been useful in laptops and given that Apple sells them at a premium, even small increases in market share are very lucrative. The reason they didn't was cost and mitigating risks infringing on relevant patents. For a phone this is essential and not optional, for a laptop this isn't the case.

Re: Apple in Advanced Talks to Buy Intel’s Smartphone-Modem Chip Business

#74

Post by samdoidge »

londons_explore wrote: post #67
samdoidge wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need the modem within a mobile phone, but now you're adding it to a laptop in addition. It isn't clear it makes more sense to me.

You could argue that perhaps the computer shouldn't have built in WiFi either - after all, it could tether to a phone (via a cable or Bluetooth) to use wi-fi. Except WiFi modems are cheap because there is lots of competition and most of the patents are easy to license, so everything has WiFi now.

For me to have 4G access, I need to connect to a network, and for that I need to pay. I currently do this through my phone which I need to be connected when there is no wifi more than my laptop. Is the price of 4G access low enough to have this on my laptop in addition to my phone? Not currently.

Re: Apple in Advanced Talks to Buy Intel’s Smartphone-Modem Chip Business

#75

Post by pbalau »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #73
pbalau wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reason this is not a feature is that it would add a lot of cost related to patents and IP licensing. Looking at the numbers here(1), this is not right. They sold ~46 millions iPhones, ~9 millions iPads for a rounded total of ~50 millions devices with a GSM modem. Meanwhile, they "only" sold ~5 millions Macs, which include all the laptops and desktop offerings. Therefore, adding a GSM device to all their mobile…

I think you under-appreciate how stupendously expensive it is to settle patent disputes. There's no question that 4G would have been useful in laptops and given that Apple sells them at a premium, even small increases in market share are very lucrative. The reason they didn't was cost and mitigating risks infringing on relevant patents. For a phone this is essential and not optional, for a laptop this isn't the case.

> I think you under-appreciate how stupendously expensive it is to settle patent disputes.

I'm arguing that they already solved this issue, since they are selling so many devices with GSM modems. Unless you can provide documentation demonstrating otherwise, I am not going to believe their agreement is to use GSM modems only on iPhones and these particular models of iPads, but is to use GSM modems on whatever devices they see fit. I don't think Apple are that stupid to limit themselves like that.

Re: Apple in Advanced Talks to Buy Intel’s Smartphone-Modem Chip Business

#76

Post by georgespencer »

tpetry wrote: post #51
jillesvangurp wrote: post #47

Interesting, Apple could do some interesting things with this. The qualcomm situation has resulted in a lot of stagnation in our industry. Companies like Apple are forced to work with them. But given their track record as being aggressive on the IP front (both sides), they have to spend a lot of effort engineering around this stuff. Companies like Intel, Qualcomm, Nokia own a lot of these patents and Apple has been p…

Theres really no great need in 4g for macbooks? I mean you can activate your wifis hotspot with handoff directly from your macbook without ever touching your iphone.

Apple has investigated this over the years, even getting as far as building a red board prototype 3G MacBook Pro in 2007:

https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-wants-its-3g-macbook-prototy...

(Green and blue boards tend to be for production-ready prototypes, red is fairly hacked together.)

I believe the objections are 50:50 software-related and battery. How do you set suitable data usage thresholds on a Mac which is running over a 3/4/5G LTE network? The thermal performance of MacBook Pro is already weak at the high end and battery life suffers.

I would be surprised if, when Apple switches to its own power efficient chipset in its portable Mac line, they don't offer a BTO option which includes cellular capabilities through a built-in SIM.

Re: Apple in Advanced Talks to Buy Intel’s Smartphone-Modem Chip Business

#77

Post by zimbatm »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #73
pbalau wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reason this is not a feature is that it would add a lot of cost related to patents and IP licensing. Looking at the numbers here(1), this is not right. They sold ~46 millions iPhones, ~9 millions iPads for a rounded total of ~50 millions devices with a GSM modem. Meanwhile, they "only" sold ~5 millions Macs, which include all the laptops and desktop offerings. Therefore, adding a GSM device to all their mobile…

I think you under-appreciate how stupendously expensive it is to settle patent disputes. There's no question that 4G would have been useful in laptops and given that Apple sells them at a premium, even small increases in market share are very lucrative. The reason they didn't was cost and mitigating risks infringing on relevant patents. For a phone this is essential and not optional, for a laptop this isn't the case.

If I remember correctly the price of the Qualcom "essentials" patents is based on the price of the whole device. So in that regard it would make sense to avoid laptops since there are smaller margins and the price tag is also higher.

Re: Apple in Advanced Talks to Buy Intel’s Smartphone-Modem Chip Business

#78

Post by pentae »

The irony that Apple really hate paying that royalty but expect App developers to do the exact same.

Here's a fun anecdotal story. Me and my partner both have iPhone 7+ devices and the same carrier. I get 2 bars of 4G signal and she gets none inside our apartment. She has to walk outside to take calls. I couldn't understand how this was possible but after some research I discovered that my iPhone has a Qualcomm modem and hers has an Intel modem.

Say what you want about Qualcomm but they make the best modem in the business. The reason I have not upgraded is quite simply because Apple no longer make a phone with a Qualcomm modem and I won't be able to get signal where I live.

Obviously, i'm an edge case. But for the average person paying $1500 for the "Best smartphone in the world" it sure seems crazy that they're also getting the worst modem in the world packaged inside it so Apple can save a few dollars on the cost of the unit.

Re: Apple in Advanced Talks to Buy Intel’s Smartphone-Modem Chip Business

#79

Post by msh »

msravi wrote: post #52
phenylene wrote: post #19

Can someone explain why Intel was having such a hard time competing with Qualcomm? What are the challenges in developing modems?

The hardest part is to get power management right. Anyone can build a modem that "works", but nobody other than Qualcomm, (and I really mean that), has gotten power management right. What I mean is that even today, if you buy a 4G enabled phone not powered by Qualcomm, your battery will drain in a few hours and you'll be left with a dead brick for the rest of the day. Source: I spent years building 3G and 4G PHY chip…

Bullshit on the drained in a few hours. IPhone xs have quite fine battery life. See https://www.anandtech.com/show/13392/the-iphone-xs-xs-max-re... for example.

Re: Apple in Advanced Talks to Buy Intel’s Smartphone-Modem Chip Business

#80

Post by tw04 »

pbalau wrote: post #71
jillesvangurp wrote: post #47

Interesting, Apple could do some interesting things with this. The qualcomm situation has resulted in a lot of stagnation in our industry. Companies like Apple are forced to work with them. But given their track record as being aggressive on the IP front (both sides), they have to spend a lot of effort engineering around this stuff. Companies like Intel, Qualcomm, Nokia own a lot of these patents and Apple has been p…

> The reason this is not a feature is that it would add a lot of cost related to patents and IP licensing. Looking at the numbers here(1), this is not right. They sold ~46 millions iPhones, ~9 millions iPads for a rounded total of ~50 millions devices with a GSM modem. Meanwhile, they "only" sold ~5 millions Macs, which include all the laptops and desktop offerings. Therefore, adding a GSM device to all their mobile…

You realize that qualcomm's ridiculous licensing terms entitles them to a percentage of the sales price of the end device, right? At $2-3k per laptop that's not exactly chump change and would likely lead to a noticeable price increase on a laptop that's already considered "overpriced" by the general public.
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