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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

#111

Post by shmerl »

kennywinker wrote: post #32
shmerl wrote: post #22

Apple getting more patents? What can go wrong.

I don’t think apple has a particularly bad track record with abusing patents... they’ve used them in big ip battles with major competitors who also used patents against them, never to crush small innovators that I am aware of.

I think they are quite infamous in this regard, like going after rounded corners, "slide to unlock" and similar trivial ideas that not only have prior art, but shouldn't be even patentable to being with. So I don't have any trust in them not abusing any new patents.

Small innovators are often simply too worried to enter some markets due to this. Because they don't have the arsenal of big competitors to fend off patent threats.

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

#112

Post by Spooky23 »

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…

Even with Apple margins, the cellular radio adds like $150 to an iPad.

The technical issues are accommodating it with the design decisions made. Personally, I think it’s a smarter decision to make the iPhone/iPad pairing model low friction, as Apple has.

This is also a small/minority use case. LTE laptops are a very small product category — nobody wants to add a cellular plan. This feature will only matter if carriers start killing cable with millimeter wave 5G.

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

#113

Post by SomeOldThrow »

panpanna wrote: post #89
pentae wrote: post #78

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…

Not to start a flamewar, but did it ever occur to her that there are other smartphone brands out there? (just trying to understand why people accept this sort of things)

If the software is what matters (which certainly holds true for me), there's only one other smartphone brand.

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

#114

Post by wl »

tolqen wrote: post #3
bpye wrote: post #2

This worries me. Wouldn't this leave us with Qualcomm once again the only manafacturer of cellular modems for everyone else? I somehow doubt Apple would keep supplying the Intel parts to any other OEMs.

Nobody except Apple bought the Intel parts anyway (possibly because they were absolute flaming garbage relative to Qualcomm’s products), which is why we’re in this position in the first place.

Telit's LE910 series uses Intel parts. For my uses, they've been very nice.

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

#115

Post by throwaway2048 »

Spooky23 wrote: post #112
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…

Even with Apple margins, the cellular radio adds like $150 to an iPad. The technical issues are accommodating it with the design decisions made. Personally, I think it’s a smarter decision to make the iPhone/iPad pairing model low friction, as Apple has. This is also a small/minority use case. LTE laptops are a very small product category — nobody wants to add a cellular plan. This feature will only matter if carrier…

The only reason it adds $150 is the ridiculousness surrounding Qualcomm licensing.

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

#116

Post by tw04 »

telcodud wrote: post #101
tw04 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Qualcomm has royalty caps for smartphones, tablets, and laptops: https://investor.qualcomm.com/static-files/f2a607b2-efed-424... Quote: We broadly provide per unit royalty caps that apply to certain categories of complete wireless devices, namely smartphones, tablets and laptops, which effectively provide for a maximum royalty amount per device.

Yet they keep all their licensing deals a secret so that statement means exactly nothing. That cap could be $20k for all we know. Furthermore it's negotiated per oem and at their discretion.

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

#117

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

Spooky23 wrote: post #112
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…

Even with Apple margins, the cellular radio adds like $150 to an iPad. The technical issues are accommodating it with the design decisions made. Personally, I think it’s a smarter decision to make the iPhone/iPad pairing model low friction, as Apple has. This is also a small/minority use case. LTE laptops are a very small product category — nobody wants to add a cellular plan. This feature will only matter if carrier…

How are carriers going to kill cable with 5G? Won't they still want to charge $10/Gb? If that's the case, 4G is already faster than a lot of people's current connection at $50. If you use more than 5 Gb per month, it wouldn't make sense to go full mobile.

For example, 30 minutes of TV every other day is already pushing 8 Gb...

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

#118

Post by aswanson »

Spooky23 wrote: post #112
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…

Even with Apple margins, the cellular radio adds like $150 to an iPad. The technical issues are accommodating it with the design decisions made. Personally, I think it’s a smarter decision to make the iPhone/iPad pairing model low friction, as Apple has. This is also a small/minority use case. LTE laptops are a very small product category — nobody wants to add a cellular plan. This feature will only matter if carrier…

What are the odds on the carriers actually doing that? I've been predicting that for like 10 years.

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

#119

Post by etcet »

msh wrote: post #79
msravi wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That test is using Wifi, not LTE.

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

#120

Post by skavi »

umvi wrote: post #99
pentae wrote: post #78

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…

> 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. A few dollars? Qualcomm skins you for all you are worth. Yeah, the actual chip is few bucks more, but the support framework for that chip is mega $$$. Want to debug the modem? Looks like you need Qualcomm's proprietary debug tool QXDM! That'll be $25K per year per se…

That honestly does not sound like a lot of money for a company anywhere near Apple's scale.
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