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Apple and Qualcomm’s Billion-Dollar War Over an $18 Part

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Re: Apple and Qualcomm’s Billion-Dollar War Over an $18 Part

#111

Post by danjoc »

threeseed wrote: post #79
danjoc wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Apple is against. In this case. Apple has a history of demanding extortionate patent licensing fees for incredibly obvious ideas. You seem to be missing the bigger picture. The attack on Qualcomm is against the company, not the patents. Qualcomm snapdragons are the only competitive ARM chips against Apple's A series. Apple is trying to destroy Qualcomm and monopolize the market. That's not going to help the little g…

> Apple has a history of demanding extortionate patent licensing fees for incredibly obvious ideas When ? I am only aware of one situation in their history i.e. Android where Apple has sought an ongoing royalty. > Apple is trying to destroy Qualcomm and monopolize the market What ? Apple is never going to sell their CPUs to their competitors. They are a product company not a components vendor so not sure what market…

>> Apple is trying to destroy Qualcomm and monopolize the market

>What ? Apple is never going to sell their CPUs to their competitors.

Who said Apple would sell CPUs to competitors? You don't monopolize a market by having competitors. Not real ones anyway.

Re: Apple and Qualcomm’s Billion-Dollar War Over an $18 Part

#112

Post by tooltalk »

rgbrenner wrote: post #23
yoz-y wrote: post #11

Is it a common practice in other fields to charge a percentage of final product as a fee? To me it seems that while this can make sense to some extent there should be a cap. If I put a modem which uses Qualcomm IP in a car should I also pay 5% of the price?

A patent holder can charge whatever they want, or even refuse to allow anyone to license it. The difference is that Qualcomm agreed to FRAND (fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory) licensing terms in exchange for their patent being included in the standard. Once they got their patent in the standard, now they're saying they get to charge whatever they want. That's the problem. That wasn't the deal they and everyon…

no, a patent holder CAN NOT charge whatever they want. Apple tried it during their quest to destroy Android (Samsung) a few years back, but most of their utility claims were "apportioned" accordingly. Apple was able to gorge the entire profit on per device on a couple of frivolous design patents, but the SCOTUS stepped in to reverse that absurd ruling last year.

Contrary to your unsubstantiated claims, Qualcomm's licensing rates are publicly available and published time to time -- often in the range of 3% to 5%. Apple according to this article pays nowhere close to the published rate that most other handset makers are paying.

Re: Apple and Qualcomm’s Billion-Dollar War Over an $18 Part

#113

Post by greglindahl »

wernercd wrote: post #110
mcculley wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dell, HP, and Lenovo ship laptops with a built-in LTE modem.

"Built in" as soldered unto the mother boards? Or "Build in" as in an expansion card added to an expansion card slot (even if "internally")? I assume the difference between those two would be the difference between price?

I haven't looked in a recent laptop, but a while ago there was a standard for a single interior expansion card.

Re: Apple and Qualcomm’s Billion-Dollar War Over an $18 Part

#114

Post by tooltalk »

mcculley wrote: post #67
yaantc wrote: post #6

That's a very one-sided pro-Qualcomm piece. The big issue with Qualcomm IP practice is that they don't charge IPR on the modem function, but over the whole device. So put the same modem in a cheap phone, or in an expensive laptop, and the IPR will be very different. This is really charging IPR on a lot of value completely unrelated to the modem. Historically, the cellular/3GPP world was very phone centric. The specs…

>they don't charge IPR on the modem function, but over the whole device. Is this why there's no option for an LTE modem in a MacBook Pro?

No.

Qualcomm's patented features do drive market demand (or add value) for mobile devices, including that of Apple's. That's why Qualcomm can ask a percentage of the entire device.

This is not so with MacBook Pro -- unless Qualcomm can prove it otherwise.

Re: Apple and Qualcomm’s Billion-Dollar War Over an $18 Part

#115

Post by dpark »

tooltalk wrote: post #104
sgift wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem seems to be that there's no definition what exactly FRAND actually means. The only thing everyone seems to agree on is that "you cannot exclude companies from licensing your tech", but apart from that it seems to be wild west.

@sgift: no, there is some definition of what FRAND is. It's just that Apple doesn't like it. In once instance, Apple's own FRAND expert came out testifying against Apple (in a 2012 ITC case involving Samsung and Apple). And no, under FRAND, Qualcomm can refuse license.

> @sgift: no, there is some definition of what FRAND is.

There really isn't a clear definition for "fair" or "reasonable", which is why this ends up in court.

> And no, under FRAND, Qualcomm can refuse license.

No. That's the "non-discriminatory" part. This one is actually pretty clear.

Re: Apple and Qualcomm’s Billion-Dollar War Over an $18 Part

#116

Post by [deleted] »

svantana wrote: post #107
alexandercrohde wrote: post #78

You guys are making this a really irrational, really emotional "Apple vs Qualcomm" issue. The root of the problem is not that. The root of the problem is bad patent law. It really doesn't matter what apple does, it doesn't matter if their CEO eats babies, the merits of a patent are irrelevant to whether the company "feels like a baddy." If you think apple has bad monopolistic practices in its app store, that only rei…

Who said anything about a "problem"? It's a fight between corporations, I don't see anything about this that is bad for society at large. Apple already turns a huge profit on each phone, it's not likely that they would pass on a potential saving to the consumer. And Qualcomm is hardly a patent troll, they use their licence fees to fund R&D. There are plenty of problems with our IP laws but is this really one of them?

[deleted]

Re: Apple and Qualcomm’s Billion-Dollar War Over an $18 Part

#118

Post by [deleted] »

philjohn wrote: post #101
alexandercrohde wrote: post #78

You guys are making this a really irrational, really emotional "Apple vs Qualcomm" issue. The root of the problem is not that. The root of the problem is bad patent law. It really doesn't matter what apple does, it doesn't matter if their CEO eats babies, the merits of a patent are irrelevant to whether the company "feels like a baddy." If you think apple has bad monopolistic practices in its app store, that only rei…

It's a difficult one - Qualcomm have invested a huge amount of money in developing some awesome baseband hardware - so should see some protection of that.

[deleted]

Re: Apple and Qualcomm’s Billion-Dollar War Over an $18 Part

#119

Post by Aloha »

zaroth wrote: post #97
Aloha wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to sell your app in the Apple ecosystem - its very hard to build a modern mobile device without Qualcomm IP.

The stronger argument I think is that Apple did not get its App Store put into a global standard which can't be avoided in exchange for promising to let people sells apps on it under FRAND terms. Apple can do whatever it wants on its own App Store. It's their device and they aren't a monopoly nor is it anti-competitive for them to charge a high fee on their own store. But Qualcomm IP is part of the LTE standard on th…

Yeah, that was the unstated subtext of my post.

Re: Apple and Qualcomm’s Billion-Dollar War Over an $18 Part

#120

Post by MBCook »

MikusR wrote: post #103
MBCook wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

‘Conspired’ to have regulators go after a patent monopolist for not following the terms they agreed to? That’s not a conspiracy.

noun: conspiracy; a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful.

How is it harmful or unlawful to sue someone for violation of a contract?

That’s why contract law exists.

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