Qualcomm Says Apple Broke Contract, Hindered Performance of Its Chipsets (arstechnica.com)

Qualcomm has filed a 139-page rebuttal of a lawsuit lodged by Apple in January in which the US chipmaker counterclaimed that the iPhone giant was "misrepresenting facts and making false statements." From a report on ArsTechnica: It alleged that Apple had "breached" and "mischaracterized" deals it had in place with Qualcomm and accused the Tim Cook-run firm of interfering with the chipmaker's "long-standing agreements" with iPhone and iPad manufacturers, such as Foxconn. In a statement, Qualcomm said, "Apple effectively chose to limit the performance of the Qualcomm-based iPhones by not taking advantage of the full potential speed of which Qualcomm's modems are capable. Apple's actions were intended to prevent consumers from realizing that iPhones containing Qualcomm chipsets performed far better than iPhones containing chipsets supplied by Intel."

Comments

Re:Abusive monopoly mad, news at 11.

[BronsCon]

The real story, here, is that the iPhone could have faster connectivity. That it doesn't isn't even a financial decision, as Apple has opted to use the better part in some production runs and the inferior part in others, and hinder the performance of the superior part to negate any possible advantage it may bring. If it were a financial decision, they'd have used only the cheaper Intel chips.

In short, they had a better part available from a supplier with whom they already have a relationship (and who, in fact, is already supplying that part); they designed the device around the use of that part, and they actually produce the device with that part. They, then, re-designed the device around an inferior part and reduced the quality of the user experience of the device in order to optionally use that part.

I'm willing to bet the R&D cost of designing and testing four versions of the board (Qualcom and Intel; standard and plus), the development cost of integrating yet another chipset driver into the OS image, the cost of having a 3rd and 4th hardware revision certified by the relevant government agencies (worldwide), and the ongoing cost of developing and testing against two additional models of iPhone (standard and plus) far exceeds the couple pennies they may have saved on each unit containing an Intel chip.

Over all, this was a net expense for Apple and a net negative to the user experience of the iPhone7. That's the real story, here.