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I'm curious: why would Qualcomm be obligated to license its chipsets to Samsung in furtherance of Samsung's goals of competing with Qualcomm? Can't Samsung just

I'm curious: why would Qualcomm be obligated to license its chipsets to Samsung in furtherance of Samsung's goals of competing with Qualcomm? Can't Samsung just design its own chipsets? I'd love to have this explained to me. Presumably there's a reasonable explanation for this expectation, but it doesn't sound reasonable on the surface.

Grazester 9y ago
They already did this but it seems that Samsungs exynos uses some patients of Qualcomm.
klagermkii 9y ago
Samsung has designed their own chipsets (Exynos series), but Qualcomm will only grant a patent license for them to use their chipsets as part of their own phones. They won't allow Samsung to sell Exynos chips to be used by other companies.
- aey 9y ago
  Samsung just doesn't want to pay the licensing fee. TI has no problems selling arm phones. Apparently the r&d costs in this space are higher then lawyer fees. Otherwise why wouldn't they dump some money into r&d and get some patents of their own to cross license with Qualcomm.
  - sofaofthedamned 9y ago
    TI don't do mobile chipsets anymore, do they?
    - aey 9y ago
      That's true. Forgot they exited the market. mediatek has no problems selling arm phones. Qualcomm has only 50% of market share in that space and there are plenty of other competitors. Unlike the x86 server market. Samsung, Intel and Apple have enough cash and tech clout to crush Qualcomm into dust if they really wanted to compete on r&d. Throwing a few million at a lawsuit is just a negotiation tactic.
      - sofaofthedamned 9y ago
        Is this related to just CDMA patents?
      - threeseed 9y ago
        You're still missing the point though. Qualcomm would still be likely to participate in any future standard and would likely still have contributing patents. If they aren't going to license it now under FRAND then why would they do so in the future ? Whether Intel, Samsung, Apple et al contribute more to the standard is irrelevant. Also Mediatek and Qualcomm have their own patent sharing agreement: https://www.mediatek.com/press-room/press-releases/joint-public-statement-by-mediatek-and-qualcomm https://www.mediatek.com/press-room/press-releases/joint-pub...
        aey 9y ago
        How do you determine FRAND? My opinion is that since apple is making 40b a year on iPhone sales, 50% of Qualcomms market cap a year, then Qualcomm is charging Apple a fair and reasonable price. If qualcomm chose not to be part of the LTE standard, those patents would still be enforceable, and they could charge whatever they want, like they did with wcdma. I think legally FRAND is defined ambiguous enough that many kinds of pricing schemes are acceptable, so there is nothing illegal with qualcomm charging a percentage of device cost. My point on bringing up MediaTek was that if Apple wants a discount, they can cross license with Qualcomm, like other companies have. Intel can offer Qualcomm it's fabs, or x86, or server patents. Qualcomms pricing has not been so unfair or prohibitive as to prevent small or large players from making a mountain of profits from the cellular device market. I own stock in both Qualcomm and Apple, so I feel like they are both wasting money on lawyers instaead of engineers :).
  - psykotic 9y ago
    > Apparently the r&d costs in this space are higher then lawyer fees. Otherwise why wouldn't they dump some money into r&d and get some patents of their own to cross license with Qualcomm. I'm sure there's plenty of cross-licensing already, but Qualcomm gets close to 80% of its pre-tax profits from patent licensing, so they have asymmetric incentives and are in very different bargaining positions. (Source: http://www.economist.com/news/business/21715705-its-biggest-customer-apple-suing-it-1bn-qualcomm-again-under-attack-living http://www.economist.com/news/business/21715705-its-biggest-...) I'm highly skeptical of patents as a whole, so I do find it hard to cry tears of sympathy for patent warmongers like Intel, Samsung and Apple, even if Qualcomm is a particularly bad actor.
anonuser123456 9y ago
Samsung is asking for a license to the patents, not any chipsets. It is required that the owners of standard essential patents license them under FRAND terms. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_patent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_patent
jonnat 9y ago
It's not about licensing chipsets but standard-essential patents. Qualcomm lobbies to get their proprietary technologies in industry standards in exchange for fair licencing to competitors. Qualcomm is not upholding their side of the deal.

Grazester 9y ago

They already did this but it seems that Samsungs exynos uses some patients of Qualcomm.

klagermkii 9y ago

Samsung has designed their own chipsets (Exynos series), but Qualcomm will only grant a patent license for them to use their chipsets as part of their own phones. They won't allow Samsung to sell Exynos chips to be used by other companies.

aey 9y ago
Samsung just doesn't want to pay the licensing fee. TI has no problems selling arm phones. Apparently the r&d costs in this space are higher then lawyer fees. Otherwise why wouldn't they dump some money into r&d and get some patents of their own to cross license with Qualcomm.
- sofaofthedamned 9y ago
  TI don't do mobile chipsets anymore, do they?
  - aey 9y ago
    That's true. Forgot they exited the market. mediatek has no problems selling arm phones. Qualcomm has only 50% of market share in that space and there are plenty of other competitors. Unlike the x86 server market. Samsung, Intel and Apple have enough cash and tech clout to crush Qualcomm into dust if they really wanted to compete on r&d. Throwing a few million at a lawsuit is just a negotiation tactic.
    - sofaofthedamned 9y ago
      Is this related to just CDMA patents?
    - threeseed 9y ago
      You're still missing the point though. Qualcomm would still be likely to participate in any future standard and would likely still have contributing patents. If they aren't going to license it now under FRAND then why would they do so in the future ? Whether Intel, Samsung, Apple et al contribute more to the standard is irrelevant. Also Mediatek and Qualcomm have their own patent sharing agreement: https://www.mediatek.com/press-room/press-releases/joint-public-statement-by-mediatek-and-qualcomm https://www.mediatek.com/press-room/press-releases/joint-pub...
      - aey 9y ago
        How do you determine FRAND? My opinion is that since apple is making 40b a year on iPhone sales, 50% of Qualcomms market cap a year, then Qualcomm is charging Apple a fair and reasonable price. If qualcomm chose not to be part of the LTE standard, those patents would still be enforceable, and they could charge whatever they want, like they did with wcdma. I think legally FRAND is defined ambiguous enough that many kinds of pricing schemes are acceptable, so there is nothing illegal with qualcomm charging a percentage of device cost. My point on bringing up MediaTek was that if Apple wants a discount, they can cross license with Qualcomm, like other companies have. Intel can offer Qualcomm it's fabs, or x86, or server patents. Qualcomms pricing has not been so unfair or prohibitive as to prevent small or large players from making a mountain of profits from the cellular device market. I own stock in both Qualcomm and Apple, so I feel like they are both wasting money on lawyers instaead of engineers :).
- psykotic 9y ago
  > Apparently the r&d costs in this space are higher then lawyer fees. Otherwise why wouldn't they dump some money into r&d and get some patents of their own to cross license with Qualcomm. I'm sure there's plenty of cross-licensing already, but Qualcomm gets close to 80% of its pre-tax profits from patent licensing, so they have asymmetric incentives and are in very different bargaining positions. (Source: http://www.economist.com/news/business/21715705-its-biggest-customer-apple-suing-it-1bn-qualcomm-again-under-attack-living http://www.economist.com/news/business/21715705-its-biggest-...) I'm highly skeptical of patents as a whole, so I do find it hard to cry tears of sympathy for patent warmongers like Intel, Samsung and Apple, even if Qualcomm is a particularly bad actor.

anonuser123456 9y ago

Samsung is asking for a license to the patents, not any chipsets. It is required that the owners of standard essential patents license them under FRAND terms. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_patent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_patent

jonnat 9y ago

It's not about licensing chipsets but standard-essential patents. Qualcomm lobbies to get their proprietary technologies in industry standards in exchange for fair licencing to competitors. Qualcomm is not upholding their side of the deal.