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Qualcomm CEO says he’s expecting Apple to use its own modems in iPhones in 2024
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- crazygringo 4y agoI'm curious what kind of cost savings this is going to provide Apple with per-device. Also are there other benefits like integrating onto the main chip or something? Or other business benefits?
- notafraudster 4y agoAlmost ten years ago now, Qualcomm and Apple began suing each other. Apple's position was Qualcomm was playing hardball with patents that ought have a FRAND license. Qualcomm's position was Apple was being mean, and then also to sue various downstream part contractors for not paying royalties they claimed were owed to them but that Apple was contesting. In general Apple won more of the litigation than they lost (but not all), and the litigation eventually ended in a large settlement. But Apple said at the time of the settlement, that it was untenable to have to source all of their LTE stuff from Qualcomm and they planned to secure their supply chain in the coming years. This is that statement now coming to fruition. So in toto, my impression is that this isn't fundamentally about seeking any particular cost savings or technical difference, so much as it Apple trying to disentangle themselves from external suppliers who they view as hostile or undependable.
- crazygringo 4y agoThank you! That's incredibly helpful context.
- bombcar 4y agoApple has enough cash on hand to buy 1/3 to half of Qualcomm but the government would likely shut that down quite quickly. So they’ll roll their own. They built a CPU so a modem shouldn’t be incredibly difficult.
- nerdjon 4y agoThis isn't quite them just building their own. Or at least presumably. in 2019 they bought the modem business from Intel.
- tnel77 4y agoI feel like this is getting a little nuanced. “They bought a company to get a head start, thus they didn’t actually create their own modem.” It’s been roughly four years since that purchase. Surely they’ve done some work since then that would justify labeling it as “Apple created their own modem.” I feel like this would be comparable to me saying I cooked dinner and someone replying “you bought the food from Kroger and the cookbook from Barnes & Noble, so it doesn’t count” while I stare at a pile of dirty dishes like “sure feels like it counts.”
- joezydeco 4y agoThe PASemi team took two years from acquisition to first Apple silicon. I'm guessing the Intel stuff was a lot messier. It's not like Intel was a streamlined company that excelled at embedded SoCs.
- meepmorp 4y agoAt least a couple of those years were the pandemic, so that might've affected some timelines.
- nerdjon 4y agoI agree with where you are going with that, but the person I responded too mentioned that they could buy a part part of qualcom but instead just made their own. But instead they bought part of intel. It doesn't diminish what Apple is building, but I think given the context it is important.
- tooltalk 4y agoFirst, Apple is known to squeeze every penny from their suppliers to improve their bottom line. Second, likewise, Apple sued every single wireless patent holders (eg, Nokia, Ericsson, Qualcomm, etc) to negotiate better licensing terms -- but, to be fair, it's not uncommon for other smartphone OEMs to do so in court. Third, Apple's legal argument was always that Qualcomm's per-device (ie, final product) royalty basis licensing offer was not FRAND. Apple believes that the royalty should be based on the cost of Qualcomm's chips instead. But, of course, there is no legal basis or industry practice to support Apple's unfounded claim and, consequently, LOST EVERY lawsuit based on this claim for past 10+ years. Fourth, "... then also to sue various downstream part contractors ..." No, you don't sue everyone in supply-chain. The wireless patent holders collect their royalty only once and at the top of the supply-chain, ie, smartphone OEMs, to maximize their profit. and that's been the industry practice for much of the past 25+ years (possibly even longer). Fifth, "... it was untenable to have to source all of their LTE stuff from Qualcomm ..." Umm.. Stop, stop, stop! So in conclusion, it's all about saving Apple's margin, that's all. I don't blame any company for trying to minize their cost, but the recent event with Qualcomm, ie, FTC's attack on Qualcomm with Apple orchestrating behind the curtain, was highly unethical and abuse of their political power. PS. insulting languages removed
- sonofhans 4y agoYou know, you can disagree without including the insulting language. That will lead to more and better discussion.
- izacus 4y agoThere's nothing seriously insulting in that post. Calling out biased Apple defenders for their misleading claims isn't an insult no matter how much some would want it.
- kevin_thibedeau 4y ago> Apple believes that the royalty should be based on the cost of Qualcomm's chips instead Sounds great. Apple should also base their app store tax on the cost of hosting.
- mschuster91 4y agoInteresting that no one talks about the elephant in the room - why are technologies for supposed public standards patentable in the first place? IMO, all standards that are mandated to be used by a government or a regulatory agency should be patent and royalty free and accessible by everyone, alone to have a healthy competition space instead of (effectively) a Qualcomm monopoly on the vendor side.
- giantrobot 4y ago> why are technologies for supposed public standards patentable in the first place Because they were developed in private by the stakeholders and then submitted as part of the standardization process. Money did get spent. At the core of the situation is multiple private companies all contribute technology towards a standard that a larger group of companies can implement. Without the option of license fees there's little incentive for companies to invest in developing these technologies. Part of the standardization process is making the patent licenses available at a "fair and reasonable" rate (FRAND). When the patent holders have large patent pools of their own they cross-license in lieu or in addition to paying actual license fees.
- mschuster91 4y agoGovernments could also push for these standards to be developed at universities or pay companies to develop them, to be then openly released.
- giantrobot 4y agoUniversities aren't always better than private companies with respect to patents and licensing. Sometimes they're much worse because there's no real reciprocity of licensing. Governments could set up national labs to develop communication technologies but they're not going to be competitive with private companies pay wise. If you're a radio engineer you can be stuck on a government schedule salary or get a nice six figure "Tech Company" salary and fat stock options. Why work at the government lab when your same skills will get to twice as much at Apple or Qualcomm? I'm not arguing for the status quo but the alternatives aren't necessarily better for the public nor the engineers doing the work.
- brucethemoose2 4y ago> Also are there other benefits like integrating onto the main chip or something? Yes, but the iPhone chips may be tiled by the time this happens, so it might not be "on chip." This is probably for the best, as the RF analog stuff a modem chip has to deal with requires certain compromises. > Or other business benefits? Just getting away from Qualcomm is a big one, lol Apple isnt the only company they started a feud with. Intel accused them of being anticompetitive in a remarkable rant back in 2018: https://newsroom.intel.com/news/another-attempt-stifle-competition/ https://newsroom.intel.com/news/another-attempt-stifle-compe...
- seiferteric 4y agoHow about security? My understanding is these things have an entire other processor outside of iOS control that can control your phone and is buggy.
- mcphage 4y ago> I'm curious what kind of cost savings this is going to provide Apple with per-device My understanding is that Qualcomm charges a percentage of the total device cost, rather than a fixed price, so as phones get more expensive, that cost increases.
- jaywalk 4y ago2024 headline: "Qualcomm sues Apple for patent infringement"
- eppp 4y agoHas already happened many many times
- WastingMyTime89 4y agoThere are two kinds of companies in this world: those currently being sued by Qualcomm and those Qualcomm is considering suing.
- meepmorp 4y ago... again
- tiffanyh 4y agoNope. This was resolved back in 2019, with Apple paying $5B to Qualcomm https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/04/qualcomm-and-apple-agree-to-drop-all-litigation/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/04/qualcomm-and-apple-ag...
- gsich 4y agoGood. Qualcomm can burn for their shitty driver policy. Main reason why Android upgrades are (it's getting better ...) such a clusterfuck.
- RealStickman_ 4y agoAt least they're better than Mediatek afaik
- robotnikman 4y agoNot sure why you are getting downvoted, because its true. Qualcomm is one of the main things holding Android devices back, and their driver policy is shitty.
- BuildTheRobots 4y agoI don't suppose someone could point to more info on this?
- r1ch 4y agoIt's the same reason why your home router runs an ancient version of Linux that can never be updated. The hardware requires a proprietary firmware blob that only links with a specific kernel. You can never update the system independently, you're at the mercy of Qualcomm releasing updated blobs.
- babypuncher 4y agohttps://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/03/the-fairphone-2-hits-five-years-of-updates-with-some-help-from-lineageos/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/03/the-fairphone-2-hits... Basically Qualcomm only releases proprietary Linux drivers for their chips, provided as a precompiled binary blob, and they only offer ~2 years of support before dropping them all together. Because the Linux kernel does not have a stable binary interface for driver modules, getting an old driver to work with a new version of the kernel can become a hacky nightmare.
- sumtechguy 4y ago
- tiffanyh 4y agoBattery life improvements. I have to imagine this will bring considerable battery life improvements since the radio will be fab on the same latest generation TSMC node that Apple gets access too (as opposed to Qualcomm fab'ing on 3+ year old nodes).
- HDThoreaun 4y agoWhy would apple waste the limited high end fab space on the modem? They'll probably fab it on a generation or two old process.
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- selectodude 4y agoQualcomm fabs on Samsung "4nm".
- tooltalk 4y agoQualcomm fabs on Samsung and TSMC. Unlike Apple who put all their eggs in one basket, TSMC, Qualcomm always used multiple fabs -- usually rotate between releases -- to produce their chips. Qualcomm also was one of SMIC's largest customers before they were blacklisted.
- jof 4y agoCould it also be, with the advent of Satellite SOS, that Apple is starting to explore non-conventional mobile RF protocols, and that Qualcomm's product offerings are only really geared towards generic, standards-based mobile networks.
- roneythomas6 4y agoSatellite SOS is based on the same bands used by 5g. Also it is now part of 5G NR Release 17. Qualcomm modems since Sanapdragon X60 had support for these bands. Even before Qualcomm officially announced Snapdragon satellite with X70 modem, Huawei was offering satellite communication with Snapdragon X65 in China, which is the same modem found in iPhone 14 series.
- malchow 4y agoThis lower power modem and the Enovix Si battery and we're looking at 5G for real, finally.
- runlevel1 4y agoWhat makes it so difficult to produce a cellular modem? Complex specification? Lots of edge cases?
- j16sdiz 4y agoand battery life. Intel did it with some firmware / microcode, and it took too much energy.
- mzs 4y agopatents: https://www.qualcomm.com/content/dam/qcomm-martech/dm-assets/documents/qualcomm-5g-handset-licensing-program.pdf https://www.qualcomm.com/content/dam/qcomm-martech/dm-assets...
- mdasen 4y agoDoes that make it difficult to make a cellular modem or just expensive? Those are two different things. I'm assuming that they were asking why it's so difficult that so few vendors do it and why it's taking Apple so long. For example, Intel had trouble competing with Qualcomm's modems - they were always a generation or two behind. Apple bought Intel's modem business around 3.5 years ago and it looks like it'll take 5 years for them to come out with their first Apple-modem phone - and Apple wasn't starting from scratch. Apple was starting with a billion dollar purchase of Intel's modem business including all that IP, 2,200 Intel modem employees, 17,000 wireless patents, etc. It's gotten to the point that Qualcomm is basically the only game in town for high-end smartphones. Even Samsung who has their own modems went with Qualcomm worldwide for the Galaxy S23 - which they hadn't done for previous models. If it were just a matter of paying money, Apple and Intel would have created a competitive chip quickly.
- babypuncher 4y agoApple and Qualcomm have been fighting over patents for a decade. I presume Apple is designing their own chip that does not require any licensed tech from Qualcomm, which is what makes it harder.
- rdsubhas 4y agoIt's interesting to see discussions here that are adamant that this is only about improving profit, or only about quality (battery), or only about getting back at qualcomm. Apple has repeatedly shown that you don't have to make decisions on one to compromise the other. You can launch your own chip (M1), and improve quality (battery, perf), and improve profits, and get back at intel. It's the same here. Watch the iFixit teardown videos to see just how big the standalone qualcomm modem chip is. I knew it was big, but it was even bigger than I thought. Apple moving to an integrated chip can be a win in both quality (battery improvement and space on the SoC to put other stuff), cost, and getting back at qualcomm (who is getting more and more like Intel of mobile world, comfortable, monopolistic, litigative). They've proven that a vertically integrated SoC is better in every way. So maybe stop arguing whether it's "this or that" it's this and that.
- PHGamer 4y agoyea but apple has also chosen to use lightning with shit xfer speeds just to lock in its customers. m1 might have been nice but not every descision they made was good (look how they nerfed qualcomm iphones back in the day because the intel models couldnt compete with it)
- ZainRiz 4y agoFirst I'm hearing about nerfed iphones, but if true this sounds like a reasonable decision from a business perspective. They wouldn't want customers worrying about whether they got the better qualcomm iPhone X or the slower intel iPhone X. Apple could have chosen to make everything with the faster qualcomm chips, but they prob wanted to derisk their supply chain by diversifying onto two chip manufacturers (and perhaps play them against each other for negotiating power) Either ways, once you arrive a the result that you need to chip manufacturers making chips for the same phones, you need to make sure your customers have practically the same experience regardless of the underlying hardware they end up with Consistency is key
- unxdfa 4y agoThe reason they went with Lightning was because the other option was Micro-USB at the time. Lightning is so so so much more robust than that awful USB connector and can be inserted any way round. Bring on 2015 and USB-C appeared which Apple jumped on pretty quickly with their MacBooks. The iPhone is an outlier because due to the insane number of devices out there, if you change it now everyone's Lightning accessories are dead in the water. But it doesn't really matter now. Only thing Lightning gets used for most users is charging and it works fine for that and people have cables and chargers already floating around. This isn't a big deal really. They ship a USB-C to Lightning cable with the last 2 iPhones I bought and all my chargers are USB-C.
- unxdfa 4y agoIf you have enough cash and in house engineering skills to pull this off it makes sense. You get full control over the baseband firmware, power management, supply chain, cost, integration, process, security surface, everything.
- mohamedattahri 4y agoHard to resist the extrapolation from Visual Voicemail to see Apple one day in the near future shipping software for carriers to deploy on their networks to support features E2E integrated with their modems.
- takinola 4y agoI've a sneaking suspicion that Apple's vertical consolidation of the iPhone supply chain makes the company much more fragile. There are clearly lots of economies of scale by building custom silicon that's optimized for their use cases. However, if their sales drop, they become saddled with factories, product lines and lease commitments that further drag on costs and make it hard to react and change direction.
- asdff 4y agoI don't think that's such a problem for apple, since there is such a market for 3 year old products from them. iPhone 8 was effectively a product being sold for 5 straight years from apple, as the 8 and then as the second generation SE. For their computers, they also sell them for a few years past when they were cutting edge too, since there's always a market for a macbook that's a few hundred bucks cheaper and most consumers don't know what the difference between M1 or M2 might be anyhow.
- gonzo41 4y agoI tend to agree. One way to ease that pain is for apple to make itself a supplier to others rather than the supplier and consumer of it's own parts. A top of the line iPhone costs ~$500 to 1000 bucks! why not try and go after the middle of the market by licencing the chipsets and other tech so that they can then supply mid teir companies that can compete in the android space with the lure of apple chipsets and hardware.
- panick21_ 4y agoI don't think so, they can still have suppliers that carry much of the risk if they want to. They just make sure they control the IP.
- mrkramer 4y agoOfc Apple can do it inhouse but I as an "economist" wonder who can specialise better? Apple is bigger and more powerful than Qualcomm but do they really have that comparative advantage to deliver better product. Qualcomm has years of know-how but looking from Apple's point of view it is better to be self-sufficient then to rely on the 3rd party. I guess time will show.
- euos 4y agoApple has the volume. Random search shows they have roughly a quarter of the world smartphone sales (I also would expect Apple users to upgrade more frequently). Apple has just several SoC packages with the same cores across all its products. Samsung (2nd is sales volumes) has many more product lines and uses vastly different silicon.
- gricardo99 4y agohow does apple get around the qualcomm patents? I’ve always heard everyone goes through qualcomm because they own a good deal of the IP and patents for the radio/wireless comm stack. Would love to hear any insights on this.
- kasabali 4y ago> Amon did not confirm whether Apple would pay Qualcomm QTL licenses if it moves to its own modems, but said royalty was “independent from providing a chip.” They'll probably get around by paying the full price. This was what Samsung did with Exynos, they didn't used Snapdragon SoC yet they paid the full price of the SoC (not just the FRAND patent fees for the modem).