Will we know if the iPhone Xs will support T-Mobile’s 600 MHz spectrum before the first tear down? I’m not sure if that’s something that will be announced or not.
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Qualcomm Expects Apple to 'Solely' Use Intel Modems for 2018 iPhones
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It will be shown in the spec / support document after the announcement.
I'm not sure it's too much per se, but the percentage of a device cost is bizarre, when some devices are just models of another with more storage. However, this does not excuse Apple going to an inferior supplier just to avoid paying Qualcomm as much money and causing the iPhone's performance to drop as a result. If you're launching a $500+ phone in 2018, it darn well better have the Qualcomm X20 radio in it.
Your answer makes no sense. The Qualcomm chipsets are self contained and, themselves, practice any patent that Qualcomm demands a license fee for. Qualcomm claims chip X practices patent Y. They sell chip x. Then they demand an additional royalty for patent y.
This isn’t a situation where they are demanding a fee for functionality that exists outside the chip.
And the law is clear on this. They are going to lose in federal district court, because their only argument to distinguish against prior case law is that their patents are held by a separate company than the company selling the chips. The law pierces such fictions.
Let's separate the cost whether it is too much and paid by percentage issues into two.
It only looks "bizarre" now that it is charged by selling price percentage. It is exactly the same model as our tax system. The higher earning paid higher percentage, and they subsidises part of the societies. So everyone should be able to afford a mobile phone. In the 2G / 3G era, Mobile Phone are no commodities, there are literally billions of people who cant afford phone that are more than $50, if you have a model where everyone were charged $10 a pieces, the bottom half of the population will have no access to it, and it does no good to the technology distribution in itself. That is why the model is charge at percentage, you could now make at $20 phone where it would not have been previously possible in a $10 model.
But in the Smartphone era, this model also meant you are charging % of Camera, CPU / GPU and lots of other technology innovation. That is one of the arguments against it. Other companies have already announced a per unit pricing model. This is actually in flavour of Apple, because while Apple only owes 20% of market shipment, were likely paying up to 40% of the total 4G patents cost because of their higher ASP.
The actual payments to Qualcomm on 4G and related patents, includes everything from 4G SEP ( Standard Essential Patents ), to all other patents Qualcomm owns for Power management, UX, SoC design, etc. And this total is roughly **Double** of Intel, Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia, ZTE, Samsung and LG Combined. Even though Qualcomm only owns roughly 30% of those SEPs. I think everyone will have a different opinion whether they are charging too much or not. Since we don't have any means to arrive at that answer, they will have to bring each other to court.
I do not understanding where you coming from. Since you previously suggest Apple do not have to paid Qualcomm patents if they are not using Qualcomm Chip, does that means Apple would not have to paid any patents fees to the major 4G Patents Holder, Qualcomm, Huawei, Samsung, ZTE, Nokia, Ericsson, if they were using MediaTek Modem?
I suggest you read up what is SEP first before continuing.
I never suggested Apple doesn’t have to pay license fees if they are NOT using Qualcomm chips. I said they don’t have to pay patent license fees if they DO use Qualcomm chips.
And I don’t have to read up on SEP.
You are arguing a business cases of how a company should operate or sell their IP. Which the trial isn't and never was in the first place.
And in my previous reply I just posted an example, where you have to paid MPEG patents licenses fees to use the video decoder inside your Qualcomm Chip, even it it was already in the SoC.
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I don't understand what third party in here means. Mobile LTE patents aren't like video patents where you have a standard body / entity handling all the patents issues. So yes Apple will have to negotiate with all the major patents holder ( there are only a few anyway ).
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I am not arguing a business case. I am arguing the law.
The reason you have to pay mpeg even though you buy a SOC is because the person selling you the SOC doesn’t own all the patents.
The law is clear. When you sell a product that substantially embodies your own patents, you are not entitled to receive patent license fees from the person you sold the chip to. That’s the law. You have no idea what you are even talking about. Your theories don’t trump the Supreme Court.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/16pdf/15-1189_ebfj.pdf
Held:
1. Lexmark exhausted its patent rights in the Return Program car-
tridges that it sold in the United States. A patentee’s decision to sell a product exhausts all of its patent rights in that item, regardless of any restrictions the patentee purports to impose. As a result, even if the restrictions in Lexmark’s contracts with its customers were clear and enforceable under contract law, they do not entitle Lexmark to retain patent rights in an item that it has elected to sell.
...
This Court accordingly has long held that, even when a patentee sells an item under an express, otherwise lawful restriction, the pa- tentee does not retain patent rights in that product. See, e.g., Quanta Computer, Inc. v. LG Electronics, Inc., 553 U. S. 617. And that well- settled line of precedent allows for only one answer in this case: Lexmark cannot bring a patent infringement suit against Impression Products with respect to the Return Program cartridges sold in the United States because, once Lexmark sold those cartridges, it ex- hausted its right to control them through the patent laws. Pp. 5–9.
1. Lexmark exhausted its patent rights in the Return Program car-
tridges that it sold in the United States. A patentee’s decision to sell a product exhausts all of its patent rights in that item, regardless of any restrictions the patentee purports to impose. As a result, even if the restrictions in Lexmark’s contracts with its customers were clear and enforceable under contract law, they do not entitle Lexmark to retain patent rights in an item that it has elected to sell.
...
This Court accordingly has long held that, even when a patentee sells an item under an express, otherwise lawful restriction, the pa- tentee does not retain patent rights in that product. See, e.g., Quanta Computer, Inc. v. LG Electronics, Inc., 553 U. S. 617. And that well- settled line of precedent allows for only one answer in this case: Lexmark cannot bring a patent infringement suit against Impression Products with respect to the Return Program cartridges sold in the United States because, once Lexmark sold those cartridges, it ex- hausted its right to control them through the patent laws. Pp. 5–9.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/07pdf/06-937.pdf
Held: Because the doctrine of patent exhaustion applies to method pat- ents, and because the License Agreement authorizes the sale of com- ponents that substantially embody the patents in suit, the exhaus- tion doctrine prevents LGE from further asserting its patent rights with respect to the patents substantially embodied by those products. Pp. 5–19.
(a) The patent exhaustion doctrine provides that a patented item’s initial authorized sale terminates all patent rights to that item. See, e.g., Bloomer v. McQuewan, 14 How. 539.
(a) The patent exhaustion doctrine provides that a patented item’s initial authorized sale terminates all patent rights to that item. See, e.g., Bloomer v. McQuewan, 14 How. 539.
In the long run it will benefit all of us to have one or more vibrant competitors to Qualcomm.
Qualcomm is a parts supplier, not the government. That is like saying that a supplier with a special technology to increase the fuel efficiency of a Ford truck should be able to get a percentage of the total truck price, whether it's the base trim or the full loaded King Ranch with every options package. That makes no sense.
I don't think those low end phones are using Qualcomm chips, they're Intel, MediaTek, or some other crap.
The App Store isn't the government either, yet Apple charges by percentage of app price. Charging by percentage is quite common for IP or product access.
Heck, Apple itself licenses its own "Made for iPhone" IP at a percentage of a third party device's price. Bet you didn't know that. Apple even wanted 10% at first, with a $10 minimum, while Qualcomm only asks 3.25%.
Except, with Qualcomm, it's not a percentage of the high price Apple charges us for an iPhone. It's a percentage of the far far lower price that Apple pays Foxconn. Plus there's a cap and they got huge rebates.
They're using Qualcomm patents no matter what, and thus must pay for use of that IP by percentage of device cost. Even the Chinese government, who can do whatever they want, agreed this is fair.
Ditto for the base rates of the other cellular patent holders like Motorola, Samsung, Ericsson, Nokia, Huawei, you name it. Qualcomm is not unique in its pricing scheme. As noted above, even Apple has used it.
Of course your comparison seems fair, but it’s not. When Apple charges a percentage for th App Store, that’s charging for a continuing service, not for a product, so the case law doesn’t apply. They have to continually host the app, police it to make sure it deserves to stay in the App Store, etc. And it’s not a patent license fee, so exhaustion doesn’t apply. And when they charge for Made for iPhone, they are charging a trademark licensing fee, not a patent licensing fee. There are ongoing burdens on a trademark licensor, who has a legal obligation to police the trademark, determine continuing quality of licensed goods, etc.
Maybe the laws should be different, but they are what they are and they make a certain amount of sense.
Not for a component provider for hardware. It just doesn't make mathematical sense for Qualcomm to get more money on an 8 Plus than an 8, or a 256GB iPhone versus a 64GB iPhone.
That being said, Apple should have continued using Qualcomm parts in the iPhones and sued them in the meantime.
Then maybe they should sue Apple, as that doesn't make a whole lot of sense either.
Qualcomm doesn't get more for its hardware in a higher priced device. And as anyone can easily see from the title of this thread, buying a higher quality and more capable Qualcomm chip is totally optional for Apple. Apple can use any chip they want.
Cellular modem chip purchases... no matter who makes them... are totally separate from the IP license for code that you run on them.
It's no different than buying a CPU from Intel and then having to buy a realtime OS from Intel to run on it. Buying silicon does not automagically grant free software that can run on it.
But that's the point: charging for IP by product price is NOT REPEAT NOT unusual or uncommon at all. Even Apple does it.
Of course, Apple lawyers are well known for claiming an IP price is outrageous if Apple has to pay it, but perfectly okay if Apple wants it from anyone else... like say, another smartphone maker.
Apple's beef isn't really about fairness. It's more about Apple wanting to make more profit. Which is fine, but other companies are allowed to want that as well
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They literally do. That's what a percentage means.
And end up with an inferior product that they still charge top dollar for.
Say what? A lot of the IP is in the hardware, so no, they are not paying for an OS, they are paying for the RF capabilities of the silicon.
Apple's beef isn't really about fairness. It's more about Apple wanting to make more profit. Which is fine, but other companies are allowed to want that as well
Qualcomm's pricing is undeniably extremely steep and extremely strangely structured for what they're offering. That's just a fact. If you want to argue that Qualcomm should be able to charge through the nose plus an arm and a leg because they're the only company that's put in the R&D to actually make good radios that are really efficient, fast, and reliable, fine, but don't deny the basic reality that they are charging through the nose plus an arm and a leg.
Their chips are not priced by percentage of the device.
The IP for the hardware comes with the hardware.
The IP for the broadband code that RUNS on the hardware is separate.
They are not linked any more than claiming that if Apple sells you an ARM CPU for repair, that they also owe you a license to iOS just because the CPU is optimized for it.
Quite the contrary. Their pricing method is common in the IP world, especially for cellular patents. Here are example announced base percentages from other such providers:
As for the idea that the price is steep, well, it's not all for Apple, since they only paid a small percentage based on the few hundred dollars Apple paid Foxconn for each iPhone, as Apple never even had a license agreement, but instead rode on the back of their manufacturers' licenses. So when Apple whines about paying "more for adding features", they're talking dimes while charging their own customers hundreds of dollars more.
Especially for the capabilities that you get, paying Qualcomm $10 is nothing compared to what Apple wanted Samsung to pay for patents like slide-to-unlock. Without Qualcomm's billions and billions of dollars of R&D, there would be no 4G phones right now. Slide-to-unlock isn't even used by Apple any more.
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Yes they are. That's literally what a substantial portion of the dispute between Apple and Qualcomm is about.
They are charging an arm and a leg for their radios. This is simply a fact. However, they are also unparalleled in terms of their product, so you could argue that they should get paid an arm and a leg and the first born child for their technology. Just don't deny that they charge a crapload for it.