Qualcomm Is Seeking US Import Ban For iPhones (bloomberg.com)
Qualcomm is seeking to block the sale of iPhones in the U.S. after Apple decided to stop paying them billions of dollars in licensing fees for smartphone chips. Bloomberg reports: Qualcomm is preparing to ask the International Trade Commission to stop the iPhone, which is built in Asia, from entering the country, threatening to block Apple's iconic product from the American market in advance of its anticipated new model this fall, according to the person, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private. The ITC is a quasi-judicial agency in Washington that has the power to block the import of goods into the U.S. and processes cases more quickly than federal district courts -- the venue in which the companies are accusing each other of lying, making threats and trying to create an illegal monopoly. The escalating legal dispute revolves around patents Qualcomm holds that let it to charge a percentage of the price of every modern high-speed data-capable smartphone, regardless of whether the devices use its chips. Apple argues the system is unfair and Qualcomm has used licensing leverage to illegally help its semiconductor unit.
So, to defend itself against being called a monopoly, it's acting like a monopoly.
I hear Apple has some cash. Can't they just buy Qualcomm out? Maybe they could buy their debts and demand immediate payment, you know, kinda like what the banks did with those home mortgages.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Are we stuck in a time loop? I feel we've done this before.
Qualcomm market capitalization = $80 billion, give or take a few. Apple cash on hand = $250 billion.
I know how this turns out. Don Quixote had a more rational approach.
That depends on the last person he talks to.
You're right! The banks sold the mortgages with full knowledge they were junk. So, if it makes you feel better, replace 'banks' with 'hedge funds' in the first post.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I'm not sure how your mortgage is structured, but mine definitely is a fixed-term note that cannot be "called in" or otherwise demanded immediately.
In fact, there's literally not anything that either side can do to modify the exact terms of what is due when, except for my right to accelerate the payments to the bank.
my right to accelerate the payments to the bank.
Be very careful with that. You may have the right, but it's an expensive one.
If Apple were to buy Qualcomm's debts, they might be able to do what they want with it.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
This reminds me of the days when Microsoft charged Dell a fee for every computer it shipped, even the ones that had Linux installed on them.
You failed to post the link to where the Orlando man not only had the foreclosure cancelled, he would up with a new mortgage and a lower mortgage payment.
Neither story fully explains what exactly his original loan terms were and what the "trial adjustment" was for. I've had two loans for 10 years with Wells Fargo and the forms literally let you specify how much additional principal you want to pay every month, so I call BS on the conspiracy against pre-payment. So many people want to do it they made a form to make it easy.
I think this guy had a shitty mortgage -- Haitian immigrant? Florida property? Bus driver? That's like an example taken from "The Big Short" of crappy lending practices. He probably had an awful, high-risk mortgage the bank wanted to repackage as lower risk -- thus the test adjustment program with (badly designed, perhaps) parameters which define "good payment" as basically paying what is due on time, and everything else is foreclusureville.
Given the sheer volume of shitty mortgages, it's not surprising that there are some outliers in the sea of bad mortgages who truly are good risks but who get caught in bad AIs as poor credit risks.
Banks are shitty much of the time, but there's something odd about the Orlando guy they're not telling us.
When you pay off a loan early the bank loses interest. They don't like that.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I know that we've reached a tech market top when the number of legal squabble stories starts to exceed the number of innovation stories.
When you pay off a loan early the bank loses interest.
No they don't. They have your cash in hand and can gain interest on it directly, rather than waiting for you to pay it. In fact, if you financed your mortgage at a rate below the current rate, they stand to gain by having you pay early, since the interest they'll get on the cash is higher than the interest they'll get from your payments.
Ahh, the shill is strong in this one. ....
Qualcomm is licensing this very same technology across the board to a wide range of end users at the same rates.
The problem is, Apple demand they should get a BETTER rate than everyone else, and there reasoning seems to be basically that most other smaller providers bend over and take it from Apple on pricing, so its only FAIR Qualcomm do also.
Care to explain how that fits in to FRAND? what part of FRAND states that Apple get BETTER pricing than the rest of an industry?
Thought not.
It's kinda funny when you think that Apple (and many others) have to import their own product into their own country.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
Then where is the incentive to offer the loan in the first place?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
... maybe that explains the attitude.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
That's absolutely untrue in a system with fractional reserve banking. Loaning money is the action that creates money in such a system (the theory is that you're adding other capital, for example the house, to the monetary system and so it should react by creating an amount equal to that value). Repaying a loan removes value from the system and actually makes the bank less able to loan money.
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I prepay principal with my mortgage, but the bank is still making a vast profit on my loan in spite of it. Despite making an extra principal payment per year, it only cuts the loan term to 23 years from 30. Most interest is paid on the front end of the mortgage, years 24-30 would be a fraction of the interest paid on years 1-23.
I'm also pretty sure that the vast majority of mortgages are held less than 30 years (people move, sell houses, etc) so banks *expect* that the mortgages will be paid off years ahead of their nominal loan term.
And now why should we care about someone with that much cash on hand paying the same as everyone else?
Was it really an accident though? *wink, wink*
At the time the mortgage was set up, it was worth it to them as an investment vehicle that provided (generally) stable returns for the amount of risk involved. Simple as that. Having an investment that will provide an annual return of X%, potentially for the next few decades, is valuable. If the investment comes to an abrupt end (i.e. the homeowner pays off the loan), the bank doesn't lose the value they already got out of it, and the only way they would lose the future value out of it is if they did nothing with the cash you paid them back. But none of them do that. They instead initiate new loans or invest it in some other way in order to reap various benefits.
Yes, you're technically correct, but practically speaking, there's nothing stopping them from taking the money you just paid and loaning it to the next guy in line, restoring things to where they had been already. That was my point.
That's not really how it works. The money repaid will be cancelled out by the removal of the mortgaged property as an asset. The value of the money is almost certainly lower than the value of the mortgaged asset, so the bank's assets will show a decrease. This then reduces the amount that they can loan by some multiple of the difference. The act of loaning to you made them able to make more loans, the act of repayment makes them able to make fewer loans.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
You formed your opinion of the American legal system based on the douchey comment of one /. poster who claimed that Apple would win because they have more money (despite tons of counterexamples). That's clearly moronic.
Am I justified in assuming that all non-Americans are morons?
What percentage of all mortgages are paid until maturity?
I would wager that almost none of them are, especially anymore. People move to a new city or new house in the same city, get divorced, die, go broke, whatever. There's a thousand and one reasons that mortgages are not paid for 30 years until maturity.
The lack of certainty over any one mortgage as a reliable producer of fixed income is already built into the interest rate as a risk as well as the larger business model. If mortgage lending was dependent on the majority of notes being paid at a stable basis until maturity, it would eliminate any liquidity in the housing market.
Plus, the interest payments on the debt are vastly higher than the principal for the first 10 years of the loan. The lender is front-loading their profit on the investment, so even if you go belly up after 5 years they have still made a profit *and* they still have the secured asset to sell (likely at a price over the initial selling price, barring a housing crash or other externalities).
Yes, they do. A little thing called compound interest. Over years, that adds up.
Sure, I'm quite aware of compound interest, but I'm not at all clear on why you're bringing it up. Interest in mortgages is calculated on a monthly basis and doesn't compound on itself. It's simply calculated as:
principal * interest / 12
Let's use this amortization schedule as an example. This guy apparently took out a loan for $210,000 at 8.25% and is paying $1577.66 each month. Of that $1577.66, you'll see in the first month that $1443.75 is going to the bank as an interest payment, whereas only $133.91 is being applied towards reducing their principal.
After the first month, the bank will have received all of the interest due them up to that point (i.e. $210,000 * (8.25% / 12 months) = $1443.75), meaning that if the loan is paid off in full immediately, they'll have already received all of the interest they are due up to that time; i.e. there is $0 in outstanding interest on which compounding can occur. Likewise, if he decides to keep paying the loan month-to-month, the exact same will be true.
The only way the bank benefits from compounding is if they reinvest the payments they've received, which they should've been doing anyway.
Maybe I just don't understand what you're getting at, but I don't see how compound interest changes anything I've said.
However, I've never signed a mortgage agreement that said I couldn't pay principal back early. At one point, I sold a house, and paid the mortgage off with the proceeds. I can also pay more principal early to shorten the loan.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The bank is more able to loan money. The bank is required to keep a certain proportion of its issued loans as actual assets. Suppose the bank has lent up to its limit, and I pay off my mortgage. The bank can then lend the previous value of my mortgage without acquiring more assets.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
When you pay off a loan early the bank loses interest.
No they don't. They have your cash in hand and can gain interest on it directly, rather than waiting for you to pay it. In fact, if you financed your mortgage at a rate below the current rate, they stand to gain by having you pay early, since the interest they'll get on the cash is higher than the interest they'll get from your payments.
Sure. but why would you pay back your mortgage when you could invest your money with higher interest than you pay on your mortgage?
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
For a lot of people, the emotional benefit of being debt-free outweighs the financial benefit of investing that money elsewhere.