The Secret Behind Qualcomm's Margins? Patents
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The Secret Behind Qualcomm's Margins? Patents
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Re: The Secret Behind Qualcomm's Margins? Patents
#2This is the patent system working as intended. Protection for technology development.
You may say it limits innovation. But it also protects smaller players from investing in innovation, by de-risking that a big customer might copy them and destroy their business. Which is mostly this scenario.
I think the bigger problem with the patent system is the patent trolls. Please someone solve that problem.
Re: The Secret Behind Qualcomm's Margins? Patents
#3> Qualcomm’s licensing business is best-in-class and an example many companies can learn from.
The last thing this world needs is more Qualcomm. I'd rather see the entire patent system go down in flames than this utter crap continuing.
Qualcomm has been a vampire on technology for years now, it's time for this company to end once and for all. We have to get technology under the people's control again - it is ridiculous and stifling progress that governments legally prescribe standards that are not open to everyone to implement. And especially it's ridiculous how few notable manufacturers of mobile phone SoCs remain - it's either Qualcomm or Mediatek.
Re: The Secret Behind Qualcomm's Margins? Patents
#4I question who this article is for - having worked at Qualcomm, they beat you over the head on how their business is built on patents and how they were going to go belly up some 20 years ago had they not pivoted to this model. I can't imagine a single analyst or anyone interested in the company not aware of their business model in the same way it doesn't take long to figure out that Apple is in the business of selling iPhones, mac books, etc.
Re: The Secret Behind Qualcomm's Margins? Patents
#5This is the patent system working as intended. Protection for technology development. You may say it limits innovation. But it also protects smaller players from investing in innovation, by de-risking that a big customer might copy them and destroy their business. Which is mostly this scenario. I think the bigger problem with the patent system is the patent trolls. Please someone solve that problem.
Patents don't protect smaller players -- enforcement is cost-prohibitive.
The only sector that could plausibly justify patents is biotech... but even there, the vast majority of early R&D is publicly-funded, and thus should negate protection.
A Government-mandated monopoly on ideas may have made sense at some point, but it's antiquated today. Today they serve to stifle innovation, extract rent and act as yet another form of regulatory capture -- e.g. when they become standards.
(Coming from someone who has 20+ patents to their name.)
Re: The Secret Behind Qualcomm's Margins? Patents
#6This is the patent system working as intended. Protection for technology development. You may say it limits innovation. But it also protects smaller players from investing in innovation, by de-risking that a big customer might copy them and destroy their business. Which is mostly this scenario. I think the bigger problem with the patent system is the patent trolls. Please someone solve that problem.
Unless I misunderstand, they are codifying their patents into open standards like 5G.
So you can't implement 5G without their patents. Add that to encouraging complexity (10,000+ pages of spec to do something outwardly similar to WiFi), and they have a really effective moat around an "open" standard.
The entire protocol space is somewhat arbitrary. This is a bit like patenting a strategy in a board game you created, and that everyone is required to play.
Re: The Secret Behind Qualcomm's Margins? Patents
#7Qualcomm does have a nice margin (20%) [https://valustox.com/QCOM] but this is roughly in line with other big co's in the industry.
Motorola makes 18% [https://valustox.com/MSI]
Broadcom, Nvidia, and even Texas Instruments are around 40%! [https://valustox.com/AVGO, https://valustox.com/NVDA, https://valustox.com/TXN].
Intel and AMD bring up the rear with 1.8% and 0.5%. [https://valustox.com/INTC, https://valustox.com/AMD]
For reference, Apple is at 25% and Tesla is at 11%. https://valustox.com/AAPL, https://valustox.com/TSLA]
Re: The Secret Behind Qualcomm's Margins? Patents
#8> Qualcomm’s licensing business is best-in-class and an example many companies can learn from. The last thing this world needs is more Qualcomm. I'd rather see the entire patent system go down in flames than this utter crap continuing. Qualcomm has been a vampire on technology for years now, it's time for this company to end once and for all. We have to get technology under the people's control again - it is ridiculo…
[deleted]
Re: The Secret Behind Qualcomm's Margins? Patents
#9This is the patent system working as intended. Protection for technology development. You may say it limits innovation. But it also protects smaller players from investing in innovation, by de-risking that a big customer might copy them and destroy their business. Which is mostly this scenario. I think the bigger problem with the patent system is the patent trolls. Please someone solve that problem.
Patents are inherently a bad idea because stuff can be invented independently by many people. This has happened many times in history.
Also, we don't need patents for innovation; just look at Open Source for a good example why. Stuff will be invented anyway, patents or no patents.
Re: The Secret Behind Qualcomm's Margins? Patents
#10I question who this article is for - having worked at Qualcomm, they beat you over the head on how their business is built on patents and how they were going to go belly up some 20 years ago had they not pivoted to this model. I can't imagine a single analyst or anyone interested in the company not aware of their business model in the same way it doesn't take long to figure out that Apple is in the business of sellin…
I guess it's for me, I've never worked at Qualcomm.