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That sounds very expensive. I believe a few years ago the whole SoC with the modem included was something like $20-$25. Qualcomm is basically trying to make App
by mtgx 9y ago
That sounds very expensive. I believe a few years ago the whole SoC with the modem included was something like $20-$25. Qualcomm is basically trying to make Apple and others pay almost as much for the modem as they would pay for the SoC.
This is a tactic Intel itself is also very familiar with, as they've done with their CPU and GPU bundles. I believe in some cases it was even more expensive to buy the CPU alone, so OEMs were coerced into putting an Intel GPU into any device they sold, whether it had another dedicated GPU or not.
I understand at some point it becomes more expensive (but maybe not that much more) to keep those separated, but at the end of the day I believe it was an anti-competitive tactic through which Intel used its CPU monopoly to gain a much larger portion of the GPU market than they would've gained were it not for such bundles and price coercion tactics (and probably a few threats thrown into the mix against the OEMs too, if they dared to use AMD chips).
I wish regulators would catch on to stuff like this early and nip them in the bud, rather than act 10 years later, when the damage is already done, the monopoly is already well established, and the companies are forced to pay a fine of like 5% of what they gained from achieving that monopoly through the anti-competitive tactics.
- Shivetya 9y agoI don't think it is expensive. Qualcomm is doing everyone a service by allowing anyone to buy the chipset from anyone else, just pay a small fee relative to the cost of device. This lets anyone with enough capital to get into the business and start off with good technology. Apple simply has enough money they apparently have decided they don't have to follow any rules they don't want. How do they handle licensing their patents? The article made no mention.
- lttlrck 9y agoThis is specifically about the FRAND terms Qualcomm agreed to when their patented methods were included the cellular standards. These methods were included because they may have been the best way to solve the issue but more importantly because an industry giant is ready to build chips to adhere to the standard, helping adoption and time to market. To offset that vested interest, they have to agree to FRAND terms.
- jrs95 9y ago>I wish regulators would catch on to stuff like this early and nip them in the bud, rather than act 10 years later, when the damage is already done, the monopoly is already well established, and the companies are forced to pay a fine of like 5% of what they gained from achieving that monopoly through the anti-competitive tactics. Reminds me of Mr. Robot & how Evil Corp still profited from ignoring regulations (which got people killed).
- hajile 9y agoWe have very small companies (in the low tens of millions) that make decent SoC. Nobody is going to make 4G anything for less than the tens of billions). The entire market cap of ARM is half that of Qualcomm (and around a third before they lost a quarter of their valuation). Building modems is way harder than building SoCs (all the SoC challenges plus all the modem ones too). It's taken a decade of work on 5G to just begin preliminary sampling (How many SoC generations would that be?). You also have to keep in mind that it's not just the modem in the phone. You have huge software stacks, protocol design and testing, and an entire cell tower worth of electronics to design and build. There's no free lunch. You have to strike a balance between forcing the cost onto the service provider (higher cell bills and/or slower adoption) and forcing the cost onto the phone. Considering that Qualcomm's net sales to R&D ratio is basically unmatched (most companies spend half what Qualcomm does by that metric), it's not easy to make the case for gouging in my view.