Apple said Qualcomm’s tech was no good, but privately it was ‘the best’
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
I have no doubt that Apple will likely attempt to sever their dependency on Qualcomm when they make eventually make their own modems (they've made incredible strides with their SoC's under Johny Srouji), but it will still be at least a few years before that will even be a reasonable option.
The complexity of engineering that goes into a high-performance modem is nothing to sneeze at, especially when Qualcomm owns a significant portion of 5G-related patents. Even Intel threw in the towel upon the realization that the capital expenditure wouldn't be worth it, and it would be impossible to compete with Qualcomm profitably (Intel stock actually jumped up accordingly). Qualcomm will continue to collect licensing/royalties from other manufacturers like Huawei as well, and is in an excellent position frankly.
For Apple to make a 5G modem that's competitive on power and area with Qualcomm's will be a significant feat. But Apple's got some really good design teams and I'm sure they'll figure it out eventually.
As a former person who was aware of Blackberry Mobility's Modem Firmware division by working within it.... LOL!
You understand that Blackberry created their own mobile driver because the 850 released in 1999 predated chip companies providing firmware, right?
I was pointing to you that : 1. Contrary to Blackberry when they started trying Apple has been designing chips (CPU) for some time and has knowledge internally about how to conduct this kind of projects and how to build a team for it ; 2. Apple already understands and masters the manufacturing part of chip making ; 3. Apple is so rich and has such a brand that they can most likely buy the people mastering the knowledge they still lack (anything modem specific) from their competitors.
The idea that Blackberry was doing before everyone else seems to only make my points stronger. Apple will have less R&D and engineers training to do.
If you build your own chip, you have to build your own mobile stack, and then maintain it and enhance it with the newer technologies, so it becomes a mountain of technical debt while your competitors can take what Qualcomm gives them and roll out a phone.
This assumes that Apple will maintain it's location as the top of the phone line and won't get eaten by someone else, if they slip, that mobile stack becomes a liability.
Intel doesn't seem to me like a company that is able to embark on a new technology, innovate and surpass the competition. Take a look at dGPUs, Intel has been getting smashed about by Nvidia for decades and there's a fantastically long history of Intel slowing buying up and killing hundreds of small GPU companies. If I were to pick someone to move into the Modem space and succeed it wouldn't have been Intel.
You don’t need to be Apple to know they only had three options for modems really:
1. Keep buying from Qualcomm.
2. Try and prop up Intel’s modem efforts in hope it becomes viable competitor to Qualcomm to either increase leverage or just get Intel good enough that you don’t need Qualcomm anymore.
3. Build own modems.
They tried to make 2. work, and 3. as others have noted simply isn’t viable for several years at least presumably.
Given Intel’s pretty poor track record at entering into new markets and succeeding, it wasn’t a bad bet that 2. and 3. was doomed to failure forcing a retreat to 1.
We already knew from hardware tests that Intel’s 4G modems are not competitive with Qualcomm’s too, so not unreasonable to speculate the future 5G ones might not be as good either. Thanks to Intel’s press release the other day we can largely confirm too that their 5G modems weren’t going to be competitive.
This article suggests there was also option 4, which is not something I’d have as easily speculated:
4. Try to engineer legal/market conditions that will negatively affect Qualcomm’s business to drive modem prices down.
It is this option that seems to have failed this week, if this article’s analysis of Apple’s strategy is correct.
Also, the article quotes “Adam Mossoff, a law professor at George Mason University” without disclosing that Qualcomm funds GMU exactly so it will get favorable press like this.[1]
I expect better from WaPo.
Obtw it's very likely that Apple applied leverage to convince FTC to bring their suit.
Citation needed. If anything, it's the reverse: the FTC complained that Qualcomm leveraged its chips in order to get inflated royalties for a low quality patent portfolio. From the original complaint:
> a. Qualcomm withholds its baseband processors unless a customer accepts a license to standard-essential patents on terms preferred by Qualcomm, including elevated royalties that the customer must pay when using competitors’ processors (“no license-no chips”).
(Edit: The "elevated royalties" part does imply Qualcomm was also trying to prevent its customers from purchasing its competitors' chips, but the way it allegedly negotiated the agreements with those royalties was by threatening to withhold its own chips. If Qualcomm's chips were low quality, a customer wouldn't have much to fear from such a threat. That is very much not the allegation.)
The patents are broad enough that a functional, standards-compliant modem can not be made without paying royalties to Qualcomm.
And it’s their patent and licensing policy that makes Qualcomm a lousy company to work with. It has nothing to do with the quality of their products.
That's such a dangerous conclusion that's used in politics from time to time. Just because X is worse than Y, it doesn't mean that Y wasn't also bad. Y is only better by comparison. It's as objectively bad as it ever was.
Strive for better instead of simply settling for not as bad.
Gates and MS anti-trust violations are now standard operating procedure for today's tech giants, the behavior of MS in the 90s looks incredibly harmless when compared to the wildly irresponsible socially dangerous behavior of tech giants today. We seemed to have just collectively forgotten about anti-trust and decided that the natural monopoly of tech services will be the new status quo. But anti-trust is nothing compared to the perils and social consequences of the 'move fast and break things' approach of technology and software today. The Boeing 737max is one recent example, but we're just starting to unravel the social and cultural costs of allowing companies with unprecedented power to shape human behavior and public opinions, dictate what is and is acceptable speech for their platform in the name of quarterly growth. Seems like a reasonable comment and insight to me.
On top of which Microsoft suit specifically calls out "Intel compatible PC operating systems"
From the ruling
> The District Court determined that Microsoft had maintained a monopoly in the market for Intel compatible PC operating systems in violation of 2; attempted to gain a monopoly in the market for internet browsers in violation of 2; and illegally tied two purportedly separate products, Windows and Internet Explorer ("IE"), in violation of 1.
In other words, Apple's market on Power PC machines at the time was not even taken into consideration.
Using the same logic we Apple has 100% market share on A-series based processors. ARM is not hardware it's a spec that any company can build hardware around and Apple is building their own.
Apple dictate the browser engine to 1.3billion devices. They use that monopoly to force browser standards since by disallowing browser engine competition on iOS they are able to lord those 1.3billion users over the any standard they want/don't want since other browsers are iOS are not allowed to provide their own engines and therefore can't support newer standards and so Apple prevents and real competition in browsers on iOS.
https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F3/253...
Similar issues are coming up with Apple being the only store and only way to get software on iOS. Those issues are in the courts now in both the USA and EU.
They are talking about Companies like Dell, Gateway, Compaq, HP, who made intel hardware. What choices did those companies have for an OS for their computers? Windows effectively had a 100% monopoly. They aren't talking about consumer alternatives, where you could by a Mac.
55% isn't a monopoly, Android is a very good substitute, so not really comparable to the 90s where you needed a desktop and Office to get work done and Windows controlled 90-95% of the market.
You build your own platform if you don't like it - free software people do, so can you.
I appreciate the added nuance.
The hope is that there would have been an entrant with similar technological prowess, but more humane business practices.
(I have personally worked with Qualcomm in the past on both technical and business fronts. Their technology can be very good, but their business side can be straight up offensive in their anti-competitive and predatory demands. I would love to be deposed on this topic.)
I don't think Apple is giving up its unscrupulous practices, however, and I'm pretty sure they are setting themselves up for the next battle years from now (Apple is now a direct licensee). In hindsight, QCOM should have taken lessons from Samsung's battle with Apple years back. There were so many red flags from the moment the FTC approved antitrust investigation of QCOM just days ahead of a new administration with 2 of the 5 commissioners missing, against the vehement dissent from the interim chair. I just have to wonder what's in their new licensing/business agreement -- if QCOM had to make concessions like it did before and it's another legal or regulatory minefield.
While fans brush it off as 'marketing', they would not give Google such a pass.
And... lets not forget, the FBI did break into their device. They don't win the privacy game when their device failed to be secure.
If given the choice between hanging out with the guy who committed an accidental homicide and a serial killer, I know which one I'd pick.
Perhaps if Apple really transitions to ARM on the Mac Line, that might be a reality in a couple years. I'm not sure they would want to replace x86 for the 'Pro' Desktop machines, but I don't think an ARM Mac Mini is out of the question.
Unlike a dev board, Mac caters to professional audience. Apart from iOS apps, Several professional x86 software needs to be ported to ARM before ARM Mac becomes a reality.
Who?
Sure, performance won't be as good as native, but it'll be good enough to introduce ARM Macs.
If they don't have a way to emulate x86 chips, I don't see them introducing ARM Macs.
On a side note, I wonder about the patent dynamics regarding x86 & x86-64 emulation.
When Microsoft & Qualcomm announced snapdragon powered Windows 10, intel gave a 'not-so-subtle' threat to Qualcomm regarding patents for x86 emulation[1]. MS, still released the model anyways.
I guess, Apple has enough leverage to negotiate patents for x86(intel),x86_64(AMD) emulation.
(Questionable if that's true.)
Did you mean to post a reference?
1. They don't need to pay licenses per core, so they can put 48, 96 cores in a single machine.
2. Is ARM as powerful as Intel, of course not, but who cares? ARM is more efficient so just add more cores to it.
3.Apple already owns all development stack. They already created hardware emulators for previous chip changes. They will do it again.
> so just add more cores to it.
Oh my...thermals. I don't know where to begin. Scaling cores (even if they're efficient) poses many challenges - thermal, core-to-core bandwidth, interposer design issues and warpage, and most importantly, yield as the die size gets larger. Or you'd have to break up the core dice into many die and create fabric such as what AMD Epyc server chips are doing, etc...etc. A 96 core die with decent power envelope would be in the order of 300-500 watts.
While this is true, the iPad Pro is the key. If Apple can continue to get pro apps ported to the pro they will have many already moved to ARM by the time a full machine comes out. See many Adobe apps already out or in progress.
It seems like a possible conflict if it had tech otherwise proprietary to the A series.
While I'm a big fan of ARM in general, the only other chips really competing against Apple in it's performance + efficiency are nVidia's Denver cores and the ThunderX2; for similar reasons. Not that Qualcomm or Samsung's chips are bad by any means; just different.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/11/15255318/qualcomm-sues-ap...
The company in 2002 used a large compute farm to simulate the entire network stack (57 cells, hundreds of users) and to prototype changes to improve sector throughput. My group built the network emulator and tested TCP performance. They tested and simulated the crap out of their designs. Once the hardware was all built then they drive through the canyons of San Diego which is the second-worst wireless environment on Earth (Hong Kong #1 worst) to tune it so that it works well. Then they charge "too much."
The Europeans slap something together, producing networks very sensitive to site planning to work AT ALL, and then they charge a lot more for the network hardware changing data networks the way a young girl changes her shoe color every other day...
You have a choice when it comes to wireless network hardware and software. Qualcomm stuff is Rock solid. No other company does half of the design and field proving the Qualcomm does with their Network equipment.
No affiliated, but by the way did Qualcomm do this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROZCTtgOn6s
> producing networks very sensitive to site planning to work AT ALL
It's funny that you think site planning is as flexible as you imagine. It usually isn't.
That being said, there is crap on both sides, but the focus on Qualcomm to building a closed system doesn't win my sympathy.
In another of your comments it's "The Asians". I don't think it helps putting billions of people into a bucket and then label and bad mouth them. It doesn't explain anything about the world and helps no one.
"second-worst wireless environment on Earth"
Well I have splendid working 4G here in Europe. If that's the second worst wireless environment on Earth I'm fine with it.
Now it's first to file so if your an inventor inventing you better have the thousands of dollars to run to the patent office before some rich lazy tool steals your blood, sweat and tears.
Overall the tech companies helped/lobbied to get this terrible law passed!
This also means that if you want a patent you need to file a provisional application before publishing your work anywhere (e.g. the other commenter’s YouTube example). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provisional_application
Having a first-to-invent patent system makes patent disputes into complicated messy legal fights about when different people first encountered an idea. First-to-file leaves much less ambiguity.
Even with the availability of provisional applications, the 12 month limit on priority date, and the relative stringency required to avoid challenges to the priority date, doesn't seem to tip the scales significantly towards encouraging the creation of what we think of as inventions while simultaneously simplifying possible court proceedings, or lowering ambiguity as you put it.
It's saying something because my iPhone X is the most I've ever spent on a phone. With AppleCare NYC sales tax, the 256GB iPhone X cost me ~$1,450. Approximately what I paid for my MacBook.
I don't why the X's connectivity is so poor, buy my best guess is they changed the WiFi/network chip away from Qualcomm.
Withholding royalties till you can pay less is as unnecessary as downplaying hardware issues and avoiding taxes.
Apple argued in court that Qualcomm wasn't licensing their patents fairly, something they agreed to do by helping shape standards based on them.
They did this through "creating evidence" by negotiating and selecting for favorable (but non-equivalent) patent deals as examples.
Even if Apple's sole goal was to prove that they could license a much larger portfolio of patents for much less as a way of demonstrating that Qualcomm is overcharging, the fact that this was their goal doesn't make them wrong. "I'm going to prove you're overcharging by demonstrating that I can license other patents cheaply. Look, I licensed other patents cheaply!" is actually a pretty good argument that Qualcomm is overcharging.
The FTC obviously had no such proof that QCOM was "overcharging" or breached their FRAND obligation, so instead they used the euphemism like "elevated fee" to describe QCOM's licensing practice. In other regulatory investigation, QCOM wasn't even allowed full access to Apple's false testimony (eg, rebates for exclusivity or Apple's switch to Intel), much less representation to respond to its accusation.
Now the true definition of 'overpriced' in this context is 'can they have some alternative that can do a better or cheaper'? Both will try to maximize their own profits and it is possible Apple made a penny wise pound foolish plan to try to cut costs.