Intel to Supply Apple With 70% of LTE Chips Needed for 2018 iPhones

[kdarling]

Qualcomm - They have the best Modem. No argument about it. But according to Tim Cook, on record, Qualcomm charges 5x more royalty then all other SEP "combined". That is Nokia + Ericsson + ZTE + Huawei + Samsung + Intel + some others. i.e 80% of all patents cost on mobile network are going to Qualcomm, granted Qualcomm has many other patents from CPU , GPU, Power Management and UI etc.... but seriously 5x?

Knowing Cook, he manipulated that number somehow. He's rather good at that kind of thing. For example, Apple has no license with Qualcomm. Apple left that to Foxconn and the other manufacturers, so that the license fee would only be based on what Foxconn sells phones to Apple for, NOT for the MUCH BIGGER price that Apple demands from its own customers.

In any case, the reason Qualcomm can get a bit more than most others, is because they created the core technology for 3G, and own about half the patents for it.

Since then, they've also spent billions of dollars a year in R&D on LTE and further generations. So they also own a lot of that as well.

License fees repay them and all the others who do the research to make our phones much faster. The billions that Apple stashes overseas does none of that for us.

I have yet to seen any people saying, why has Apple put up with Qualcomm for all these years?

That's like asking why Apple has "put up" with Nokia, Ericsson, Samsung and other suppliers and licensers. Because those other companies actually create and manufacture the very technology without which the iPhone would be useless.

Apple is an incredible hypocrite when it comes to license fees. Back when the iPhone first came out, they wanted up to $40 per device for anyone to license their patents. Not to mention the heavy fees they wanted from Samsung for infringing a few non-essential UI patents.

As for charging by device price, that's done with many patents. Heck, Apple itself licenses its own "Made for iPhone" IP at a percentage of a third party device's price. Apple even wanted 10% of a device's price at first, with a $10 minimum, while Qualcomm only asks 3.25% of a device. Which technology cost billions more to create, Made for iPhone or the worldwide cellular system?

Mind you, Qualcomm's prices are likely to drop, same as they've done for years. Recently they even capped the base device price for royalties at $400. This was apparently a peace offering to Apple, whose latest phones have gone over that amount in cost from a factory, I believe.

 

[jecowa]

How are they going to have 5G when 5G isn't even an official spec yet? Don't believe all this carrier hype, 5G is still years away.

Intel was advertising their 5G technology during the olympic games. I don't think I've heard anything about 5G from carriers.

 

[Irock619]

Go Qualcomm as 5G is near.
[doublepost=1524803563][/doublepost]

How are they going to have 5G when 5G isn't even an official spec yet? Don't believe all this carrier hype, 5G is still years away.

I beg to differ. I work for a company who manufactures 5G testing solutions and business is good And yes....carriers are testing in the field and have been for well over a year already. Heck soon we will be talking about 6G.

 

[ksec]

Knowing Cook, he manipulated that number somehow. He's rather good at that kind of thing. For example, Apple has no license with Qualcomm. Apple left that to Foxconn and the other manufacturers, so that the license fee would only be based on what Foxconn sells phones to Apple for, NOT for the MUCH BIGGER price that Apple demands from its own customers.

In any case, the reason Qualcomm can get a bit more than most others, is because they created the core technology for 3G, and own about half the patents for it.

Since then, they've also spent billions of dollars a year in R&D on LTE and further generations. So they also own a lot of that as well.

License fees repay them and all the others who do the research to make our phones much faster. The billions that Apple stashes overseas does none of that for us.

The numbers aren't manipulated as Full Retail price. It has been know from the start it goes through Foxconn, not only for patents reasons but also export and import tax reasons within China. Qualcomm owns roughly 40% of 3G and 4G patents. Even if it was 50%, you can count on it to charges double the price of all other combined. Not saying Qualcomm aren't making contribution to standard, but obviously a lot of people disagree with their pricing.

That's like asking why Apple has "put up" with Nokia, Ericsson, Samsung and other suppliers and licensers. Because those other companies actually create and manufacture the very technology without which the iPhone would be useless.

Apple is an incredible hypocrite when it comes to license fees. Back when the iPhone first came out, they wanted up to $40 per device for anyone to license their patents. Not to mention the heavy fees they wanted from Samsung for infringing a few non-essential UI patents.

As for charging by device price, that's done with many patents. Heck, Apple itself licenses its own "Made for iPhone" IP at a percentage of a third party device's price. Apple even wanted 10% of a device's price at first, with a $10 minimum, while Qualcomm only asks 3.25% of a device. Which technology cost billions more to create, Made for iPhone or the worldwide cellular system?

Mind you, Qualcomm's prices are likely to drop, same as they've done for years. Recently they even capped the base device price for royalties at $400. This was apparently a peace offering to Apple, whose latest phones have gone over that amount in cost from a factory, I believe.

There isn't such thing as a choice in Mobile Standard, that is why it is called standard in the first place. And obviously Apple has not problem paying Nokia and Ericsson and Samsung. You can change supplier with any other tech, display, NAND, RAM, you can't do that with Mobile patents SEP.

And Apple isn't collecting any patents or license fees from Andriod, compared to Microsoft. The case against Samsung was more like they are copying us and we sue you for something, in that case, it is called design.

Qualcomm has always had a price cap on the phone way before this was announced. As a matter of fact the news come out as more like we are changing thing while nothing has changed at all. I don't see it as peace offering at all.
[doublepost=1524828797][/doublepost]

Go Qualcomm as 5G is near.
[doublepost=1524803563][/doublepost]

I beg to differ. I work for a company who manufactures 5G testing solutions and business is good And yes....carriers are testing in the field and have been for well over a year already. Heck soon we will be talking about 6G.

Great, What exactly is 5G in these cases? mmWave? Massive MIMO? 3GPP Rel 14 /15?

Because it is a little hard to tell how and which tech the Mobile Industry decide to call 5G according to the standard.

 

[kdarling]

Not saying Qualcomm aren't making contribution to standard, but obviously a lot of people disagree with their pricing.

Apple understandably wants to pay as little royalties as possible, so they can continue to make huge profits for themselves.

Just as understandably, Qualcomm and others want to make large returns on their investments as well. They use much of it for R&D, continuing to push the world's communications standards forward. This benefits everyone, Apple included.

And obviously Apple has not problem paying Nokia and Ericsson and Samsung.

Apple has gone to court multiple times claiming that they didn't owe Samsung anything for patents they held.

Apple has also gone to court multiple times with Nokia and Ericsson, claiming their FRAND cellular royalties were too high. Both times, they settled out of court before it could go to trial where a jury would figure out what rate was fair.

Apple famously sued Motorola over license fees, too, but then when a judge said she'd figure out the correct royalty, Apple decided not to go along "unless it was guaranteed to be one dollar or less".

That's when the judge decided and said (the same as other judges) that Apple wasn't concerned with paying fair royalties at all, but was instead simply using the court system to try to force the low payments that they wanted to make.

I do agree with your comments about "what is 5G"

 

[LordVic]

"only"
it's way more than most providers can provide and more than most people get at home.

i'd be fine with 20 Mbps on a Phone.

Don't get confused with Mbps and MBps.

20Mbps would be unbearable. 20Mbps is only 2.5 MegaBytes Per second.
200Mbps would be 25MB/s

 

[Xirian]

Apart from the quest for ridiculously fast speeds, I'm curious what people need with Gigabit LTE on their phones? Or even 200Mbps. How much data do you need in and out of your phone in a second?

That gigabit isn't only to your phone, that gigabit is shared among everyone else on your tower. More shared bandwidth available means less congestion.

 

[diipii]

Apple seems to be embroiled in a lot of "bitter legal battles" which doesn't make Apple wonderfully likeable.
And 50% yield doesn't make intel modems particularly trustable.
And the Irish tax fiasco is completely laughable.

 

[827538]

Which Qualcomm modem would be suitable for the next iPhone? I believe the intel XMM 7560 is the other modem.

X20 I believe, yeh the Intel XMM is the likely candidate for this years iPhone.
[doublepost=1524934747][/doublepost]

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, Qualcomm has had years to perfect the LTE handoff on CDMA, and I don't know if I trust Intel with that yet. Could be a non-issue, but that’s my concern personally.

Aside from Verizon and Sprint, every single network I've ever come across world wide uses GSM. So it's not an issue for the majority of customers.
[doublepost=1524934867][/doublepost]

While in no fan of Qualcomm, it’s kind of annoying that Apple is willingly using an inferior modem. Didn’t I read another article/post stating that Apple actually gimped the current Qualcomm modem so it wouldn’t outshine the Intel one?

Yes they limited the maximum throughput of the X16 modem. Intel is catching up but Qualcomm is still king when it comes to the best cellular modems. Although realistically most users will notice next to no difference between the X20 and the Intel XMM 7560, both are great modems.

 

[Williesleg]

Too bad, those are the ****** chips.

 

[springsup]

Even if Intel starts making CDMA capable modems, Qualcomm still gets paid.
They own a huge chunk of CDMA patents.
Heck Qualcomm still gets a piece of every Intel modem sale due to the SEP licenses.

Probably not. It's hard to think of anybody with more patents than Intel. They likely have a cross-licensing deal for SEPs.

EDIT: Was curious. Googled it. Intel have >55,000 patents worldwide. Wireless is actually their largest area, comprising >12,000 patents. https://newsroom.intel.com/news/int...association-recognizes-intels-patent-prowess/

They are currently battling in court because Qualcomm's demands are apparently excessive. https://9to5mac.com/2017/07/22/intel-qualcomm-legal-battle/

 

[ksec]

Probably not. It's hard to think of anybody with more patents than Intel. They likely have a cross-licensing deal for SEPs.

EDIT: Was curious. Googled it. Intel have >55,000 patents worldwide. Wireless is actually their largest area, comprising >12,000 patents. https://newsroom.intel.com/news/int...association-recognizes-intels-patent-prowess/

They are currently battling in court because Qualcomm's demands are apparently excessive. https://9to5mac.com/2017/07/22/intel-qualcomm-legal-battle/

Um..... I don't like Qualcomm, but no one can escape Qualcomm patents in LTE / 4G and 5G. They own 40%+ of it. Intel's wireless patents doesn't even match Nokia, Ericsson or even Huawei.