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I am pretty sure that the Apple lawyers were absolutely expecting this outcome, which is probably the reason why they signed such a contract. The risk was mostl
by Slartie 9y ago
I am pretty sure that the Apple lawyers were absolutely expecting this outcome, which is probably the reason why they signed such a contract. The risk was mostly on Qualcomm's side, as they were the ones writing the shady contract, while Apple would benefit from cheap components, which is a safe benefit that they would not lose in case the shady parts of the contract would come to light and provoke law enforcement to step in.
Most likely they didn't yet plan to source the LTE chips from a second supplier at the time they signed the contract, so that limit didn't affect them. Nowadays they do have multiple sources, which is probably why they did not prolong the contract any further after 2016 - because having multiple sources was worth more to them than having this discount.