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Gross. Standards should be open. One if the most expensive pieces of a mobile phone is the wireless chipset. That shouldn't cost more than the cpu/gpu. We live
by forrestthewoods 11y ago
Gross. Standards should be open. One if the most expensive pieces of a mobile phone is the wireless chipset. That shouldn't cost more than the cpu/gpu. We live in a silly world.
- jonknee 11y agoWhy should the CPU/GPU be the most expensive component?
- forrestthewoods 11y agoDidn't say it should be most expensive. But that I'd expect it to be more expensive than wifi/cellular chips. My expectation may be wrong but that's what it is. From the iphone5s it was $19 for the A7 but $32 for the wireless section. It may not be as bad anymore. But for quite a few releases the wireless parts seemed unnecessarily expensive. https://technology.ihs.com/451425/groundbreaking-iphone-5s-carries-199-bom-and-manufacturing-cost-ihs-teardown-reveals https://technology.ihs.com/451425/groundbreaking-iphone-5s-c...
- jonknee 11y agoThe estimated price of the high performance chipset and the licensing costs of the IP are different things. Either way it's a small price to pay for international standards that just work. The iPhone would be pretty worthless if it only worked with wireless IP invented by Apple.
- forrestthewoods 11y agoUpdate: I still think standards should be open.
- alkonaut 11y agoPatents affect both the digital and analog parts, but analog hardware is tricky to develop. I don't find it odd at all that the radio parts of a smartphone costs more than the cpu/gpu SoC.
- choward 11y agoThis is pretty gross: "Ericsson has more than 100 patent licensing agreements and holds about 37,000 patents for mobile communication."
- tormeh 11y agoThe expectation at HN is that anything that's standardized is a cheap commodity. Normally that's sensible as standards standardize already existing methods of solving a common problem. However, this case is different as the standard is also the development. I don't know the details, but Ericsson is widely regarded as the technology leader in telecommunications. I'd guess that Ericsson has put a lot of work into all the mobile networking technologies that are standardized and that they expect to get paid for that work.
- forrestthewoods 11y agoI'd be more sympathetic if there weren't laws requiring adherence to standards.
- wolfgke 11y agoSo you just lobby that a meta-law is generated that disallows creating laws that requires adherence to a standards containing patents.
- jsprogrammer 11y agoAnd to prevent others from doing similar work.
- jonknee 11y agoWhy is it gross that one of the most prolific inventors of wireless networking has a lot of patents about wireless networking. This isn't an Intellectual Ventures scam, Ericsson invents Real Stuff and sells lots of Real Equipment that use its standards. It's great that the license them too, it would be a shame if our phones didn't all work on the same networks.