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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

#91

Post by notfromhere »

zeusk wrote: post #90
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.

Am I the only one noticing the irony in Apple complaining about overpriced premium devices (chipsets/modems in this case)?

The better analogy is if apple claimed a portion of the income you generated by using their laptop for work.

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

#92

Post by axus »

notfromhere wrote: post #91
zeusk wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I the only one noticing the irony in Apple complaining about overpriced premium devices (chipsets/modems in this case)?

The better analogy is if apple claimed a portion of the income you generated by using their laptop for work.

or from the price you charged for your app?

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

#93

Post by notfromhere »

axus wrote: post #92
notfromhere wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The better analogy is if apple claimed a portion of the income you generated by using their laptop for work.

or from the price you charged for your app?

its a component, not a marketplace.

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

#94

Post by philg_jr »

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…

I don't understand why it could drastically increase the price of a Macbook. I can buy a ThinkPad or a Dell Latitude/Precision with a Sierra Wireless 4G M.2 card for only an extra $2-300, basically the price of the card if you were to buy it separately. Older generations of ThinkPads could also have a 4G M.2 card easily added after purchase because the antennas were built-in from the factory (did this with my X260).

I suppose (guessing) if this was a SoC and there were no standard M.2 slots, then I guess I could see why Qualcomm would want some extra royalties in that case.

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

#95

Post by ldrndll »

zeusk wrote: post #90
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.

Am I the only one noticing the irony in Apple complaining about overpriced premium devices (chipsets/modems in this case)?

No, I'm sure you're not the only one who has thought this. However, the apparent irony disappears quite readily when you examine the differences, the most important of which:

If you want a laptop but don't want to pay Apple prices, you can buy a laptop from Lenovo/Dell/Asus/you get the point.

If you want to play in the 4G/5G space you have to license Qualcomm's IP. They've been pretty aggressive about enforcing this. So aggressive in fact that they've been found guilty of anti-competitive behaviour by a US judge (in a case brought by the FTC), as well as by the EU (twice).

So yeah, in the face of that, it's difficult to argue that Apple's position - of selling premium devices in a competitive market - is in any way similar to Qualcomm's predatory tactics.

Now if you want to talk about the App Store on the other hand...

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

#96

Post by MuffinFlavored »

wil421 wrote: post #59
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…

>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. I had an iPhone 7 with an intel modem (AT&T iPhone) for 3 years. The battery did not die in 4 hours.

There isn't a Qualcomm chip on the iPhone 7 whatsoever?

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

#97

Post by freehunter »

tw04 wrote: post #82
ubermonkey wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man, I use the hotspot function of my iPhone all the time and never have heat issues. I wonder why?

Probably a combination of what surface you have it sitting on and which case you use (if any).

And ambient temperature and air movement. Anything that impacts heat dissipation.

I was in Phoenix AZ last week when it was 115F and my phone’s hotspot shut down because the phone got too hot.

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

#99

Post by umvi »

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 $$$. Want to debug the modem? Looks like you need Qualcomm's proprietary debug tool QXDM! That'll be $25K per year per seat. Oh and if you want their support (so you aren't flailing around with their gigabytes of generated logs) be prepared for another $200k annual support subscription per team. Want a certain document so you can figure it out yourself? $$$.

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

#100

Post by selectodude »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #96
wil421 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. I had an iPhone 7 with an intel modem (AT&T iPhone) for 3 years. The battery did not die in 4 hours.

There isn't a Qualcomm chip on the iPhone 7 whatsoever?

Starting with the iPhone 7, all non-CDMA models had intel modems.
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