That’s not FRAND.
“According to Apple’s lawsuit, Apple may pay the same royalty rates—or more—for iPhones that don’t use Qualcomm chips.”
http://fortune.com/2017/04/28/apple-iphone-royalties-qualcomm/
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Apple Considering Eliminating Qualcomm Chips From Next Year's iPhones and iPads
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That’s not FRAND.
“According to Apple’s lawsuit, Apple may pay the same royalty rates—or more—for iPhones that don’t use Qualcomm chips.”
http://fortune.com/2017/04/28/apple-iphone-royalties-qualcomm/
That is what I was trying to point out to kdarling. Qualcomm basically has a monopoly in the CDMA (read: not UTMS) modem business. Apple gets a cutback for using Qualcomm, but if they use a competitor’s CDMA modem, the licensing fees plus no cutback, why bother? Apple is essentially forced to use Qualcomm.
Fine. W-CDMA royalties go to Sipro. Now, let's go look at their home page:
Sipro Lab Telecom
With nearly two decades experience in patent pool creation and management for standardized telecommunication technologies, Sipro Lab Telecom leverages broad-based knowledge of both the telecommunications market and the rules and processes of standards bodies to serve our partners and customers....
...
Sipro has managed the G.729 and G.723.1 patent pools for widespread adoption of the respective technologies and has structured and launched new patent pools for the evolution of the telecommunications market today and tomorrow. In addition to these successful achievements, Sipro has been recently mandated to manage the W-CDMA Patent Pool.
With nearly two decades experience in patent pool creation and management for standardized telecommunication technologies, Sipro Lab Telecom leverages broad-based knowledge of both the telecommunications market and the rules and processes of standards bodies to serve our partners and customers....
...
Sipro has managed the G.729 and G.723.1 patent pools for widespread adoption of the respective technologies and has structured and launched new patent pools for the evolution of the telecommunications market today and tomorrow. In addition to these successful achievements, Sipro has been recently mandated to manage the W-CDMA Patent Pool.
Sipro manages the patent pool, takes in the money, and then sends it out to the companies who own the relevant patents (cough including Qualcomm cough).
Did you think Sipro was some company that developed the technologies behind W-CDMA?
Thanks, I was commenting based on what Apple claims, though it could be right or wrong since none of us know the details of the contractual agreement, but one thing Qualcomm did not dispute is that the royalties were based off of the price of the entire phone, and their claimed cap as well, instead of just the price of the radio chip itself, which I find disturbing. I can’t believe for example if Rolls Royce would charge airbus for using its engines in its airplanes by the percentage of the cost of the entire plane, etc. too many examples where this makes little or no sense, other than that Qualcomm was able to strong arm manufacturers into these kind of terms due to lack of competition
To FRR’s point, UTMS utilizers may pay a FRAND licensing fee to Qualcomm but they don’t own UTMS like how they own CDMA.
Again, if Verizon and Sprint will quit using CDMA, Qualcomm would lose their leverage.
Yeah I know. You were pretty straight forward.
His entourage seem to be coming to his defense.
Nope. First off, Sipro isn't in the WCDMA licensing business any more.
Secondly, Qualcomm has been charging under 3.4% for at keast a half decade.
Thirdly, the WCDMA license pool that Sipro used to sell, was only for a collection of minor patents, not the major ones from the big contributors.
It's clear that you've never read the ETSI FRAND agreement. There is no restriction on licensing rate methods.
And, as your out of date chart correctly noted, the big contributors all have a starting negotiation rate based on (usually wholesale) phone price.
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LOL....yep in your dreams. That’s exactly why Apple offer amazing value on RAM /s
Oh I know. Just wanted to see if you did.
You didn’t. Lol.
Lisensing is done through an organization called via group.
Here is a list of the licensors:
No qualocomm.
I have read etsi, I have also cited etsi.
Where did I state there was a restriction on licensing rate?
Making things up again
.Hey Carl, honestly speaking, do you think the WCDMA standard is related or has anything to do with the CDMA?
Way to try to backpedal from all your Sipro posts. You're not fooling anyone.
Yes, as I said above, that's a pool of minor patents, which is why it's so cheap.
It has nothing to do with patents from Qualcomm, Nokia, LG, Huawei, Samsung, even carriers like Verizon who contributed LTE patents.
Where did I state there was a restriction on licensing rate?
Making things up again
Another backpedal. So now you're agreeing that all the ETSI patent holder rates based on phone price are FRAND after all?
Just can’t resist getting in a dig at Apple instead of focusing on the topic at hand (modems and licensing).
That money is a result of Apple, not someone like Qualcomm, who greatly overestimates their impact on the success of the iPhone.
Congrats to Qualcomm, for “negotiating” themselves out of a billions of dollars contract.
Apple's high prices are a hot topic on this forum, in case you haven't noticed
. A lot of fans are taking digs at Apple over this.But I agree; adjectives are an unnecessary distraction from the point: which is that Apple is not paying anyone's per-price royalties based on retail. Far from it.
At the turn of the century, the WCDMA creators agreed to pay Qualcomm for the base CDMA technology being used. This is from nearly back then:
"As a result of the 1999 agreement, WCDMA 3G (UMTS) nets Qualcomm royalties without the company doing anything - and that amounted to 25 per cent of the company's licensing revenues in the last quarter."
Register, 2004
I'll post more tomorrow. Qualcomm gets paid for WCDMA.
Verison is scheduled to shut down their CDMA network soon (1G in the next year or two, 2G and 3G a year later), and Apple could get away with a non-CDMA capabale phone before they do so, since presumably Verizon is already pretty far along in deploying LTE replacement towers, and will be even further by next year.
Anyone who *must* have CDMA modem can just not upgrade to the latest phone. Apple can continue selling the iPhone 8 and X until people stop buying them.
The Apple watch is already LTE only and I haven't heard any complaints about it being unable to connect to CDMA or GSM.
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Everyone assumes they will go with Intel but I see the long term play to be building their own modem hardware. With the next process shrink they will have plenty of on die space to do so and that would lead to a motherboard shrink. Not ot mention the deed for their own modem in things like the watch.
According to some estimates the royalties are around $50. Would you be happy to pay that much? And what is the real world benefit?
The best LTE modems are gigabit now and as far as I know nobody is selling a phone that can do that – it's only available in LTE modems you plug into a PC.
We already don't have the "best" modems available, and I honestly don't care wether my modem is 50Mbps or 200Mbps or 1000Mbps.
Backpedaling??
You didn’t even know spiro handed over managing the wcdma patent portfolio to via group until you googled it.
Shouldn’t you start backpedaling right about now.
Oh wait these are what you claim to be “minor patents”
No i don’t agree.
Rates based on phone price are not FRAND.
You do understand that’s the entire point of this thread and the lawsuit between Qualcomm and Apple?
Are you a patent judge. Have you already assessed qualacomms patent portfolio?
What was the benchmark rate you come up with??
Prima facie indeed.
Edit.
I see, you saw that you were wrong about wcdma and then decided to shift your argument toward lte.
You should have some humility just admit you were wrong.
Lte??? What happened to WCDMA
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So because Qualcomm won’t bow down to Apples pricing demands they’ll ditch them? Because Apples profits aren’t high enough.... well I wouldn’t buy another iPhone for a while then until Intel get there act together, if they can.
I lost all support for Apple in this when they forced there suppliers to stop paying Qualcomm anything! Dirty dirty move that won’t go down well in the court room.
I lost all support for Apple in this when they forced there suppliers to stop paying Qualcomm anything! Dirty dirty move that won’t go down well in the court room.
Definitely not the only one but maybe just one in a few.
If Qualcomm is charging Apple same as it is charging other companies, I see no issue. If they are charging Apple more, just because Apple have deeper pockets...... **** them.
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