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A Lack of Alternatives To Qualcomm Is Hurting the Ecosystem (androidauthority.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the more-options-the-better dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Android Authority: Smartphone enthusiasts are probably eagerly awaiting the arrival of Qualcomm's flagship Snapdragon 835 SoC, which was unveiled back at the beginning of January. However, recent revelations suggest that consumers could be in for an unexpected wait, and we're unlikely to see an alternative manufacturer step in to fill the void given the current market conditions. The report claiming that LG G6 won't ship with the latest Snapdragon 835 flagship SoC is looking like bad luck for LG and a blow to consumers looking to spend their cash on the latest mobile technology. If true, this is also likely to have an impact on sales, as consumers hold out for better technology released in just a few months time. It's not only LG facing this prospect though, HTC, Sony, and all the other manufacturers that typically make announcements early in the year look to be facing a situation where they will be using the same processor as last year for early 2017 models. This scenario is unprecedented in modern Android history. The past few years have seen manufacturers kick start the year with flagship releases packing new processing technology. Unfortunately for these OEMs, there aren't any competing processors to use as a direct alternative to the delayed Snapdragon 835. The choice is then either to launch with an older technology or delay their product until the 835 is ready. While many will focus on performance stagnation, using the same chip also means that handsets are bound by the same feature sets, and so camera, video, virtual reality, and other capabilities won't be moving on either. Samsung's Exynos and HiSilicon's Kirin series are the closest SoCs to the 821 and 835 in terms of performance and features, but these are primarily reserved for their maker's own flagships and aren't rolled off the production line in anything close to enough numbers to meet global demand. This situation is a bit of a catch-22, with manufacturers unlikely to buy up expensive foundry lines without a strong indication that OEMs will use their products, while a lack of availability means major releases can't pick up these chips.

13 of 73 comments (clear)

  1. If you want to break Qualcomm. Shut off CDMA. by Zombie+Ryushu · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If you want to break Qualcomm. Shut off CDMA. Any manufacturer can make a GSM Phone. CDMA is Patent controlled by QualComm.The issue is; alot of USians that are on CDMA Networks, don't know they are on CDMA Networks.

    1. Re:If you want to break Qualcomm. Shut off CDMA. by squiggleslash · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Qualcomm has patents on virtually all modern mobile phone standards. In any case, you're missing the point: the issue isn't that people want to see Qualcomm punished, it's that they're unhappy and believe the industry is being held back by the dominance of one supplier.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    2. Re:If you want to break Qualcomm. Shut off CDMA. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      LTE is not CDMA, it is OFDMA. You are confusing it with its predecessor HSDPA, which was based on W-CDMA signalling.

  2. The market created this situation... by Timothy2.0 · · Score: 2

    I don't have much sympathy for this current state of affairs. Consumers voted with their dollars, Qualcomm delivered, and firms that integrate Qualcomm products into their flagship devices developed no fall-back. With such a piece of technology fraught with so many singe points of failure, it was just a matter of time before the ecosystem collapsed.

    I'm interested to see what the latest lawsuit against Qualcomm will do for the ecosystem, too.

    1. Re:The market created this situation... by knightghost · · Score: 2

      The point is that there is NO fallback available due to patent abuse.

  3. Nobody shops for a phone based on the CPU by GrumpySteen · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The vast majority of people are just looking at the brand name, interface, memory and user-facing features when shipping at a phone. If they spare any thought at all for the CPU, it's just a vague sense of satisfaction that the CPU running at a faster clock speed or has more cores than their current phone.

    If the new phones are released with the same CPU as the current generation, nobody will give a shit and the people who were going to buy them will still buy them.

    1. Re:Nobody shops for a phone based on the CPU by swillden · · Score: 2

      The vast majority of people are just looking at the brand name, interface, memory and user-facing features when shipping at a phone.

      You're right that consumers don't know or care who made their SoC. But manufacturers have to choose something, and what they choose has a huge impact on what they can offer consumers. Right now, in the upper end of the mobile phone market there is basically no competition to Qualcomm which means phone makers don't have any realistic options. That's bad, and I completely agree that it hurts the ecosystem. Competition is good, lack of competition is bad.

      In the mid and lower tiers there's lots of competition, and things are pretty good in the tablet space, too, mainly because nVidia is a solid competitor there (the Tegra series are great high-performance SoCs, but too power-hungry for phones. Tablets have much bigger batteries and can afford the power cost.) But Qualcomm owns the upper end of the phone market.

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      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
  4. The REAL reason for hurting: Binary Blobs. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Where is the IBM PC of the mobile world? When will enterprising developers be able to program these mobile computers with as much freedom as they had during the burgeoning era of personal computers?

    The ecosystem is hurting, because it is being denied the process of evolution by variation and selection; walled gardens, government-granted monopolies, government-induced backdoors, etc., are all leading to a stagnant wasteland of mediocre, purposely broken solutions to problems that nobody has, and a lack of solutions for the problems that people actually do have.

    1. Re:The REAL reason for hurting: Binary Blobs. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Where is the IBM PC of the PC world these days? You can't even change boot loaders on modern EFI laptops without being OEM sanctified.

      It's the same old corporate capitalist race to the bottom.

    2. Re:The REAL reason for hurting: Binary Blobs. by bws111 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The IBM PC may have been good for the PC industry, but it sure wasn't good for IBM. Hardly surprising other manufacturers are not looking to repeat that mistake.

    3. Re:The REAL reason for hurting: Binary Blobs. by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 2

      Are you really sure the alternative would have been *better* for IBM? IBM would have sold proprietary POWER machines instead to the same people who bought cheap PCs? And would have actually generated more revenue? The economy would have been boosted equally by more expensive, less open machines? The same economy that generates money for people to buy IBM software and services these days? Hypotheticals are fun, but it's a domino effect you have to deal with.

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      Ezekiel 23:20
  5. Part of the problem is expectations by rickb928 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    or more accurately, unrealistic expectations. Or marketing.

    Qualcomm announced the 835 when? LG announced the G6 when?

    Did anyone believe that LG would be able ship the G6 a month after the chipset was announced...?

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    deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
  6. Re:OEMs : No one to blame but themselves by unixisc · · Score: 2

    This is actually the problem when the OEMs are all Chinese. The Chinese give 100% of their business to whoever gives them the lowest price, so it does these competitors no good to remain in the business if all they are gonna be doing is being used to beat down Qualcomm's prices. And Qualcomm's salespeople ain't morons either: after the competitors have exited the market, they can easily tell the Chinese phone makers 'Take it or leave it'.

    In fact, the Koreans do exactly what you describe - second source. They'll have a BOM w/ 2 sources, and while they use both sources to keep each other honest, they will never give all the business to 1 source. Usually, they'll give up to 60% of the business to one, and 40% to the other, if it's just two. That way, if one of the suppliers drops the ball on them, they can ramp up numbers at the other, and it's less painful to go from 40 to 100 than it is to go from 0 to 100, and they'll always keep looking for multiple sources.

    Hopefully, one of the advantages of some manufacturing coming back to the US would be that manufacturers would use multiple sources for their products rather than just try to beat down prices