The law has always been clear, and Qualcomm never disputed the applicable law. What was at issue here was whether Qualcomm's terms complied with that law (the facts).
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You have no clue what FRAND means.
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FTC Wins Antitrust Lawsuit Against Qualcomm [Updated]
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The law has always been clear, and Qualcomm never disputed the applicable law. What was at issue here was whether Qualcomm's terms complied with that law (the facts).
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You have no clue what FRAND means.
What slice of that big Apple donut is filled with lawyers?
They probably have a couple hundred lawsuits ongoing at any moment, every day.
They probably have a couple hundred lawsuits ongoing at any moment, every day.
No. Read the article and the court opinion.
It makes little sense for the Court, having found that Qualcomm’s patent licenses are the product of anticompetitive conduct, to leave those licenses in place. To permit Qualcomm to continue to charge unreasonably high royalty rates would perpetuate its artificial surcharge onrivals’ chips, which harms rivals, OEMs, and consumers, and would enable Qualcomm to continue to reap the fruits of its Sherman Act violation. Thus, the Court finds it necessary to require Qualcomm to renegotiate those license agreements.
Hey, everybody - should I tell him? ;-)
Did you read the whole article? The Judge said that Qualcomm had to renegotiate its licensing fees and not hold back the selling of its chips. Apple needed the chips NOW. The judge ruling is being appealed of course and this would go on and on for months. Apple made the deal to get the chips it needed now, and let the courts continue to rule and just wait.
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EACTLY! They got the chips they needed NOW and get out of court and law suits and let the Courts decide.
Smart move by Apple
This still doesn't mean Apple needs to renegotiate.
Qualcomm, realizing a loss and hefty fine was coming, could have negotiated a "proper" deal with Apple in line with what the FTC thinks is reasonable. They could then use this is a show of "good faith" to the court to say they are proactively modifying their agreements with their customers.
Assuming the ruling stands, they would likely renegotiate. The parties’ respective bargaining positions have changed in light of this, so even if they got a pretty good deal before, they’d take a shot at doing better.
It will be interesting to see how many 'fence-sitters' there will be when the 2019 phones come out. People who believe they'll be getting an inferior product with 'Intel Inside' rather than Qualcomm and will thus 'wait' until the 2020 iPhones arrive. Is there any legitimacy to this?
I agree Apple would always renegotiate for better terms. But I always thought that Apple/Qualcomm settling early was an olive branch by Qualcomm towards the FTC saying “see, we’re changing our ways”.
I just burned another 50 calories rolling my eyes. Two more posts about your awesomeness and I can have a soda.
The decision to actually renegotiate would lie with the perceived injured party. The ruling does not force renegotiation. It blocks Qualcomm from preventing it, or rephrased, requires them to do it if a customer wants it. Just a guess, but I'd bet every vendor is not going to want a renegotiated deal. There's no guarantee it will be beneficial... especially with the current circumstances surrounding US/China tech. Apple may be more than satisfied with their current agreement and have no need to renegotiate. Contrary to your interpretation, the courts wouldn't require them to do so.
Almost none. The community of people who pay any attention to this is tiny relative to the population of phone purchasers in general. Most of the world (including just the part that buys iPhones), do not even realize that Apple introduces a new iPhone about once a year in the fall. I am always surprised when I talk to people getting ready to buy new iPhones in August and suggest that they wait until the new announcements (even if they buy the current generation at a discount), and hear that they had no idea it was going to happen.
Because intel dropped the ball. I’m sure settling with Qualcomm was the plan B anyway. Business has to keep going because you never know how long these things involving the government can take. Apple still has to design new iPhones and cannot simply wait for the final ruling, especially after intel dropped the ball.
I know hindsight is 20/20, but it sure seemed that Apple could have negotiated a better deal had it just waited for a month more.
Ah well, water under the bridge and all.
What awesomeness?
He said I know nothing about FRAND. What do you think *his* qualifications are? And if I know nothing about FRAND, who does?
We know Qualcomm won’t budge, thus the lawsuits. Apple either had to use other modem or settle with Qualcomm. Apple thought they had a chance with intel, but intel dropped the ball. So settling is the best action. And I’m sure Tim Cook is quite mad at intel. Personally I expect an Ax powered Mac by next year or so, just to piss intel off.
The concern is real. Buying an Intel based iPhone is absolutely an inferior product to a Qualcomm version. This, of course, assumes we are comparing the same generation to the same generation and all that jazz.
Based on my own experience, the current generation of Intel modem performs similar to a Qualcomm modem from 2 maybe even 3 generations back. While I don't believe there would be any inherent issue with an Intel modem in 2019, and it would likely offer an improvement over the 2018 version, I also believe that Qualcomm would provide a vastly superior modem. They are right around 2.5 years ahead of Intel in what they can provide.
For upgraders in 2019, strictly speaking about modem performance only, I'd expect that if you are upgrading from an Qualcomm device (the newest possible being the X), then you can expect there to be no upgrade in modem performance (but not any worse). If you are upgrading from any Intel modem, you can expect performance to be better. Based on this assessment, you should not use modem performance as a factor in your decision to upgrade. You should consider device performance, battery, screen, camera, design, etc.
If you're waiting until 2020 because the 2020 device will be "better" than the 2019 device, you might as well wait until 2021 because that device will be "better" than the 2020 model.
Not to just piss off intel. It will be faster, burn less power, emit less heat, and be more secure.
My first guess would be that Qualcomm saw the writing on the wall and concluded that they'd have to give Apple a considerably better deal anyway, just after years and millions of dollars in out-of-pocket litigation costs.
Second guess is that Apple found out that Intel wasn't going to be making 5G modems after all, they announced it something like the day after the Apple-Qualcomm settlement was announced, and that hence the least worst outcome would be achieved by settling before Qualcomm found out.
Either way, for the sake of the whole mobile industry I genuinely hope this judgement survives as intact as possible trough appeals. Qualcomm has for decades been an absolute nightmare to deal with because of it's misuse of FRAND patents that has allowed it to keep competitors without extremely deep pockets out of the market and those with deep pockets from succeeding. The only actual losers in this instance are Qualcomm shareholders.
Considering the volume AMD is already doing and has done for some time already I genuinely doubt volume is an actual blocker issue for a Mac Pro with an AMD CPU. If anyone's having issues with volume at the moment it's actually Intel because of their failed move to 10nm and just too much of their product catalog relying on the 14nm node.
No, the real reason why Apple hasn't followed many other hardware manufacturers that have recently introduced a slew of AMD-based systems is most probably the additional engineering needed and Apple already being over-stretched in terms of their engineering resources. We can see this fairly clearly in how the Mac Pro has been effectively abandoned, how long it took to get refresh the Mac Mini along with all their other neglected products.
Who knows, maybe the new Mac Pro that's supposed to come out this year will be powered by a Ryzen Threadripper chip? But we do know that with AMD moving to TSMC's 7nm node they'll have the efficiency advantage in the x86 space until Intel finally gets their 10nm process ready for volume production, which isn't going to happen until well into next year at the earliest.
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AMD would love the deal as they are already friends with Apple with their Radeon GPUs, but I doubt that AMD can produce things in volume that can match Apple’s demand. Plus, AMD laptop chips are not as efficient as intel’s in general, and Apple prioritize performance per watt. And if Apple was going to switch, might as well switch to their own chips right away. Apple love vertical integration of their business whenever possible.