4 ms·

They can spend some money on r&d and build a patent portfolio to force Qualcomm to cross license.

• bhc 9y ago
  Intel and Samsung specifically did that by creating WiMax as a competing standard for LTE, but look what happened. https://www.theverge.com/2017/1/17/14303910/qualcomm-allegedly-bribed-apple-wimax-iphone-ft-complaint https://www.theverge.com/2017/1/17/14303910/qualcomm-alleged...
  • aey 9y ago
    Well, standard != tech. They wanted to roll out an entire new network based on some flaky tech, instead of focusing on making a better radio. In 10 years LTE is going to be to slow, and Qualcomm is busy developing whatever is going to replace it. if Intel wants a piece of that pie they need to do some r&d.
• pritambaral 9y ago
  That sounds awfully like worsening the situation further... like some sort of an arms race.
• skybrian 9y ago
  Legal battles are competition of a sort, but competition usually means competing products in the marketplace. Lawsuits don't have the same effect on prices or quality of goods sold. You can argue that there are good reasons for patents, but the whole point of them is to create a legally protected monopoly, which prevents competition at least to some extent.
• amluto 9y ago
  Not really. Qualcomm gets most of their profits from patent licensing. If someone pressured them hard in the hardware and patent space, they would rather exit the hardware space than exit the patent space. Qualcomm minus its hardware division would be very hard to sue for parent infringement and therefore wouldn't really care about anyone else's patent portfolio.
  • aey 9y ago
    Doesn't seem like it would make a difference in the total cost. Intel could license their patents under the same terms as Qualcomm Patent Inc, and effectively get a discount out of Qualcomm Hardware Inc.
• tooltalk 9y ago
  well, that has already happened. While Qualcomm is widely credited for creating the early wireless standards (eg, CDMA) single-handedly, their customers like Samsung and LG for instance stepped up their R&D and have contributed significantly to the recent 4G standard -- so much so they are now neck and neck in terms of patent counts. In spite of this, under their contract with Qualcomm, Samsung has limited ability to market and sell their own basebands/APs in the US.
  • aey 9y ago
    Samsung is a grown up, they signed a contract for a mutually beneficial reason. If they want a steeper discount, I am sure they can offer Qualcomm more fab capacity for their chipsets. In my view, if qualcomm was being unreasonable in their pricing, Apple wouldn't have made 40b a year in profits. 50% of Qualcomms market cap. If anything, Qualcomm should charge them more. FRAND doesn't specify that the price offered had to be the same to everyone. I own stock in both, so I feel it's dumb of them to spend money on lawyers instead of engineers ;).
    • tooltalk 9y ago
      the premise of your first statement is what's being discussed and challenged here. The problem is that Qualcomm contracts are lopsided in violation of FRAND -- in this case, Qualcomm not only refuses to license their patents, but, in Samsung's case, also dictates to whom Samsung can sell their products and where they can do business. This isn't clearly about reducing their royalty payment as Apple is doing.
      • aey 9y ago
        My understanding is that Qualcomm would allow Samsung to do whatever it wants if they paid a high enough fee. Sounds like the fee is to high for the US market at least. Afaik Samsung does ship some chips for the other markets. Just because Samsung could earn a higher profit using their own chips, doesn't mean that Qualcomm should license it at that price. They could in theory compete on quality, or power at a higher price tier. Nothing in FRAND indicates that you should let competitors maximize their profits.