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How Qualcomm shook down the cell phone industry for almost 20 years

arstechnica.com

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Re: How Qualcomm shook down the cell phone industry for almost 20 years

#41

Post by bradstewart »

derefr wrote: post #38
wmf wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CPU design and RF stuff are both very difficult; I wouldn't assume one way or the other. I wonder if knowledge of CPU design is more widely dispersed (e.g. you can hire ex-Intel, ex-AMD, ex-IBM people) than cellular radios where the only (working) ones seem to be made by Qualcomm.

> cellular radios where the only (working) ones seem to be made by Qualcomm. Seems strange, given that plenty of manufacturers are making the radios on the other side of the cellular connection. Can't, say, Ericsson take the radios in their cell towers or picocells, redo their tape-outs for phone scale, and end up with a workable mobile radio?

What does "redo their tape-outs for phone scale" mean exactly? Can Intel redo their tape-outs to make a Xeon work in a phone?

I suspect those high-power radios are not doing the majority of the RF in silicon.

Re: How Qualcomm shook down the cell phone industry for almost 20 years

#42

Post by xwdv »

pier25 wrote: post #24
YUMad wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a monopoly in their own product, not in a market.

Doesn't matter, Apple is the only supplier of iOS apps and forbids any competition here.

This poor understanding of what a monopoly is on your part is a testament to how uncommon true monopolies have become thanks to modern regulation.

Re: How Qualcomm shook down the cell phone industry for almost 20 years

#43

Post by guardiangod »

derefr wrote: post #38
wmf wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CPU design and RF stuff are both very difficult; I wouldn't assume one way or the other. I wonder if knowledge of CPU design is more widely dispersed (e.g. you can hire ex-Intel, ex-AMD, ex-IBM people) than cellular radios where the only (working) ones seem to be made by Qualcomm.

> cellular radios where the only (working) ones seem to be made by Qualcomm. Seems strange, given that plenty of manufacturers are making the radios on the other side of the cellular connection. Can't, say, Ericsson take the radios in their cell towers or picocells, redo their tape-outs for phone scale, and end up with a workable mobile radio?

Heh, there are various levels of 'working'. Think Windows 9x kernel vs NT kernel. Both kernels 'work'.

Re: How Qualcomm shook down the cell phone industry for almost 20 years

#44

Post by mschuster91 »

derefr wrote: post #38
wmf wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CPU design and RF stuff are both very difficult; I wouldn't assume one way or the other. I wonder if knowledge of CPU design is more widely dispersed (e.g. you can hire ex-Intel, ex-AMD, ex-IBM people) than cellular radios where the only (working) ones seem to be made by Qualcomm.

> cellular radios where the only (working) ones seem to be made by Qualcomm. Seems strange, given that plenty of manufacturers are making the radios on the other side of the cellular connection. Can't, say, Ericsson take the radios in their cell towers or picocells, redo their tape-outs for phone scale, and end up with a workable mobile radio?

> Can't, say, Ericsson take the radios in their cell towers or picocells, redo their tape-outs for phone scale, and end up with a workable mobile radio?

Workable maybe but not power efficient, which is crucial in mobile. That takes years to figure out and is the reason why ARM is so utterly dominant on mobile - there simply is not any Intel x86 offering even close to the power envelope of ARM, even after years of ARM dominance Intel hasn't managed to get anything meaningful.

Re: How Qualcomm shook down the cell phone industry for almost 20 years

#45

Post by unixbeard1337 »

joezydeco wrote: post #28
eadmund wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the case of Apple is more like McDonald's being able to prevent its customers from ever eating food not signed-off on by McDonald's.

They can do that, if you are sitting in a McDonald’s dining room . They can’t stop you from walking over to Burger King.

It's analogous to McDonald's selling you a dining room and then regulating what food you can eat in it.

Re: How Qualcomm shook down the cell phone industry for almost 20 years

#46

Post by bsder »

Is Qualcomm a ruthless monopolist? Yep. But what people forget is that EVERYBODY was knifing one another in that space when CDMA originally came out. The only difference is that Qualcomm is the ruthless monopolist that won.

In addition, while I have no love lost for Qualcomm, what you do have to remember is that CDMA was a "bet the farm" moment. If CDMA could be delivered, it was significantly better than what existed at the time.

However, there was no promise that a power amplifier could be delivered with the specifications demanded by CDMA--Qualcomm bet that they could. Rockwell had a worldwide monopoly on CDMA power amplifiers for years because they were delivering that amp, and the yield was abysmal.

The original Qualcomm stuff was a significant engineering achievement, and, while they probably don't deserve to continue to abuse their position at this point, they certainly deserved some time to profit from their work.

Re: How Qualcomm shook down the cell phone industry for almost 20 years

#47

Post by pier25 »

bsder wrote: post #37
pier25 wrote: post #34

So why did Apple decide to make its own SOCs but not its own modem chips? I would expect making CPUs and GPUs to be a lot more difficult than modems, no?

Apple bought SiByte who were a lot of ex-DEC VLSI design engineers. So, "Apple" designing a CPU is technically correct, but its a design team from elsewhere.

AFAIK Apple designs and manufactures its SOCs but keeps using ARM designed CPUs. Not sure about the GPUs though.

Edit: Protomyth below is correct. Apple licenses the architecture from ARM but designs its custom chips.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/new-arm-designs-help-samsu...

The chips themselves are manufactured by TSMC.

Re: How Qualcomm shook down the cell phone industry for almost 20 years

#48

Post by p1necone »

CharlesW wrote: post #7
zeveb wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The iPhone app-approval market leaps to mind.

That's like saying McDonald's has a monopoly on what food appears on their menu. It's non-sensical as a complaint.

What? That's not the same thing at all. McDonald's doesn't let third party companies sell food on their menu. McDonalds is a place, not a platform. Your analogy falls short in so many ways I have to assume you're being disingenuous.

Re: How Qualcomm shook down the cell phone industry for almost 20 years

#49

Post by [deleted] »

bsder wrote: post #46

Is Qualcomm a ruthless monopolist? Yep. But what people forget is that EVERYBODY was knifing one another in that space when CDMA originally came out. The only difference is that Qualcomm is the ruthless monopolist that won. In addition, while I have no love lost for Qualcomm, what you do have to remember is that CDMA was a "bet the farm" moment. If CDMA could be delivered, it was significantly better than what existe…

[deleted]

Re: How Qualcomm shook down the cell phone industry for almost 20 years

#50

Post by sigstoat »

village-idiot wrote: post #30
zeveb wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you mean Apple owns and runs an App Store, then yes, but that’s not a monopoly. They also refuse to permit their customers to run apps not approved by Apple on the phones they have bought. That's the monopoly.

That’s factually false. You can side load apps, plenty of enterprises do it.

last i looked that requires a couple hundred dollar per year special developer account from apple, with special checks to make sure you're actually a business doing it for business reasons.

and they still sign your apps, they just do it automatically, i think.

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