Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Secret Behind Qualcomm's Margins? Patents

blog.withedge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 122 posts

Re: The Secret Behind Qualcomm's Margins? Patents

#101

Post by mensetmanusman »

croemer wrote: post #69

Oh, is Qualcomm the reason why adding cellular to an iPad is so expensive? I never understood how such a relatively small feature would cost that much. The alternative is that Apple just makes more money when setting prices like that. Would be curious how much of the price difference is extra license fees for Qualcomm.

No, that's apple marketing, eg. apple upselling 32 or 64 GB phones or ipads to 256 or 512 etc gives them huge margins on the SDDs they resell by a $100s. If that was its own business it would be larger than 3M.

Re: The Secret Behind Qualcomm's Margins? Patents

#102

Post by RugnirViking »

amadeuspagel wrote: post #100
RugnirViking wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Margins are not determined by how many companies sell certain products Rule 1: Margins are as large as a company can get away with them being Rule 2: The primary thing that brings down prices (thereby shifting consumer demand) is another company competing offering lower prices Rule 3: Fewer companies are able to maintain a unified front of higher-than-required margins for longer, owing to fewer individuals needing…

My economics 101? Your comment is a random rant that doesn't engage with my comment or with the broader discussion.

it explains why typically markets with fewer players have higher margins. This is why competition is good (and also why the government has whole departments to consider whether mergers in sparse markets will hurt consumers)

Re: The Secret Behind Qualcomm's Margins? Patents

#103

Post by mensetmanusman »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #19
mushufasa wrote: post #2

This 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.

We like to talk about the specific effects of the patent system (protects the little guy, etc), but we rarely talk about the cumulative effects of it. The more I look at the small innovators, they are all hungry to improve upon things the big companies are sitting on for 20+ years with a big moat to protect them, and I really get to thinking that in aggregate we are doing more harm than good. A response I hear is "th…

We have already run the experiment nearly 100 years ago shortly after WW2 (and prior to the Bahl Dole act) on what happens when people have idea requiring capital investments that aren't protected by risk mitigation IP.

People don't invest because of first mover disadvantage in game theory.

Re: The Secret Behind Qualcomm's Margins? Patents

#104

Post by underlipton »

AlbertCory wrote: post #84
underlipton wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Under the current system, it's already effectively "nothing" for >People who can't afford existing drugs >People who can't get corporations to develop drugs for their conditions because they wouldn't be "profitable" >People who can't make their farm's business model work even though they're fully capable of growing the crops people want and getting them to market and so on. But thank you for being my daily encounter…

wishful thinking's always better than facing reality. At least in some worlds.

Pessimists don't have a monopoly on reality, and society isn't obligated to limit itself to your low expectations just so that you can feel good about being right.

Face the reality that the status quo is unsustainable. Throw off your wishful thinking that things can go on like this without repercussion.

Re: The Secret Behind Qualcomm's Margins? Patents

#105

Post by civilitty »

chii wrote: post #86
dathinab wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While there are not many competitors, they still do (most times) properly compete due to various factors like pressure from their customer (some very very large with the capabilities to become a competition iff they stop innovating and/or become to expensive), but also factors like political pressure to stay ahead of mainland china. Through TSMC for example has margin >40%. Which isn't that surprising I mean there is…

i suspect that TSMC doesn't have as big a monopoly as you've made it out to be, not because intel is competing, but because the customers of TSMC are large enough that they "force" the innovation (aka, they "threaten" to not use them if they stop innovating). Also, TSMC hasn't been around long enough to become the slow behemoths that other big monopolies have become.

TSMC doesn’t have a real monopoly, they’re just a few years ahead of everyone else in integrating ASML’s latest tech. Samsung and Intel aren’t very far behind. The more money TSMC charges the more incentive the others have to catch up but they can only move so fast. GlobalFoundries and STMicroelectronics seem stuck in the double digits.

It makes a big difference to a few competitive customers so TSMC gets paid well for that first mover advantage, but yeah it’s not well secured monopoly.

Re: The Secret Behind Qualcomm's Margins? Patents

#107

Post by AlbertCory »

underlipton wrote: post #104
AlbertCory wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wishful thinking's always better than facing reality. At least in some worlds.

Pessimists don't have a monopoly on reality, and society isn't obligated to limit itself to your low expectations just so that you can feel good about being right. Face the reality that the status quo is unsustainable. Throw off your wishful thinking that things can go on like this without repercussion.

rather than me wasting even more time responding, why don't you go forth and pursue your all-encompassing patent solution, and report back on how it went?

Re: The Secret Behind Qualcomm's Margins? Patents

#108

Post by AlbertCory »

beambot wrote: post #90
AlbertCory wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone always says this. In fact, I was in Google's patent litigation division, and I can tell you firsthand that there is WAY less of this than you think. A cross-licensing deal is incredibly hard to negotiate. So if you could back this up with some links, it'd be appreciated. Otherwise it's just an urban myth.

All from the first page of quick Google search... Google and Samsung sign global patent cross-license deal https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/01/google-and-samsung-s... Google and Tencent agree to cross-license patents https://www.ft.com/content/0a1b904d-77f9-3b48-885d-0c2693a6d... SAP and Google Cozy Up With Wide-Reaching Patent Deal: The Potential Implications https://www.constellationr.com/blog-news/insights/sap…

Samsung is an Android partner. Google already indemnifies them for patent infringement, so no surprise there.

Tencent is from 5 years ago, and it gives no details on how many patents are involved.

SAP is from 9 years ago.

Cisco is 9 years ago as well. I was in Legal for that one. It took months of negotiating.

Note there is no cross-licensing deal with Apple, Meta, Oracle, Microsoft, or Amazon.

Re: The Secret Behind Qualcomm's Margins? Patents

#109

Post by beambot »

AlbertCory wrote: post #108
beambot wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All from the first page of quick Google search... Google and Samsung sign global patent cross-license deal https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/01/google-and-samsung-s... Google and Tencent agree to cross-license patents https://www.ft.com/content/0a1b904d-77f9-3b48-885d-0c2693a6d... SAP and Google Cozy Up With Wide-Reaching Patent Deal: The Potential Implications https://www.constellationr.com/blog-news/insights/sap…

Samsung is an Android partner. Google already indemnifies them for patent infringement, so no surprise there. Tencent is from 5 years ago, and it gives no details on how many patents are involved. SAP is from 9 years ago. Cisco is 9 years ago as well. I was in Legal for that one. It took months of negotiating. Note there is no cross-licensing deal with Apple, Meta, Oracle, Microsoft, or Amazon.

So you're saying: Clearly not an urban myth.

Google literally bought Motorola for their patent portfolio -- or at least, that's the only "asset" they retained when divesting of the company years later. And I readily admit: Google is a "be less evil" player in this respect. (But not all: See wage fixing collusion verdicts.)

At some point, we have to acknowledge that patents are pursued purely in the spirit of mutually-assured destruction from other litigious players. This manifests as a tax on everyone -- the only people that win are attorneys.

Re: The Secret Behind Qualcomm's Margins? Patents

#110

Post by AlbertCory »

beambot wrote: post #109
AlbertCory wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Samsung is an Android partner. Google already indemnifies them for patent infringement, so no surprise there. Tencent is from 5 years ago, and it gives no details on how many patents are involved. SAP is from 9 years ago. Cisco is 9 years ago as well. I was in Legal for that one. It took months of negotiating. Note there is no cross-licensing deal with Apple, Meta, Oracle, Microsoft, or Amazon.

So you're saying: Clearly not an urban myth. Google literally bought Motorola for their patent portfolio -- or at least, that's the only "asset" they retained when divesting of the company years later. And I readily admit: Google is a "be less evil" player in this respect. (But not all: See wage fixing collusion verdicts.) At some point, we have to acknowledge that patents are pursued purely in the spirit of mutually…

So now you're moving the goal posts. Now it's MAD (which I don't deny). I think we're done here. You're also bringing up irrelevancies like wage fixing: true, but not patents.

the claim was "they cross-license." As I said if you read, the myth is "plausible" but not "confirmed."

yes, there are some cross-licenses. No, they are not universal. I gave examples of obvious ones that nevertheless don't exist.

On Motorola: I'm afraid I have to claim superior knowledge on that one. At the time, Google was actually hiring patent acquisition people, and in fact, I was interviewing them. They probably fell for the myth that you fell for.

They stopped that pretty quickly, when it became clear that most of Motorola's patents were worthless. I've looked them over myself. They were worth less than nothing: it meant that suits against Motorola now had to be defended. In other words, it was a big mistake that they undid.

Post reply on HN