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Qualcomm Accuses Apple of Stealing Trade Secrets and Giving Them To Intel (betanews.com)
Mark Wilson writes: Chip-maker Qualcomm has today accused Apple of stealing trade secrets and sharing them with Intel. The company alleges that Apple wanted Intel to be able to improve its own chips so it could move away from using Qualcomm's. Qualcomm and Apple are already engaged in a legal battle, and with its latest accusations, the chip-maker wants the court to amend its existing lawsuit against the company. Apple stands accused of engaging in a 'multi-year campaign of sloppy, inappropriate and deceitful conduct'. In the new filings, Qualcomm says that upon Apple's request it allowed the iPhone maker deep access to its software and tools, but with strict limits on how those products could be used. It said, "Indeed, it is now apparent Apple engaged in a years-long campaign of false promises, stealth and subterfuge designed to steal Qualcomm's confidential information and trade secrets for the purpose of improving the performance of lower-quality modem chipsets, with the ultimate goal of eliminating Qualcomm's Apple-based business."
The Qualcomm advertising campaign just so they can sway public opinion has been ridiculous. âoeWe invent all the stuff thatâ(TM)s in your smartphones... blah blah worship usâ
They also have a wall in their headquarters with plaques for each of their parents. The more important patents get larger plaques. One of their biggest ones is a plaque for an App Store. A freaking App Store. Iâ(TM)m not surprised that Apple is sick of this shit.
That's what gives the allegation a veneer of credibility. Apple has done exactly this (albeit legally) with Samsung - going with slower Toshiba NAND and SK Hynix RAM in their devices instead of Samsung. Trying to have LG manufacture the OLED panels for their iPhones as an alternative to Samsung. Apple's MO among suppliers is like Walmart - use its market dominance to bully suppliers into accepting extremely thin margins ("Well if you won't sign this hundred million dollar contract with us at a lower unit price, then we'll just ink a deal with your competitor instead."). That's partly how they maintain such a huge profit margin (over 20%, vs about 5% for the rest of the computer industry), not just by overcharging customers. But it's a tactic which doesn't work when only one supplier dominates the market.
x86 is CISC. ARM is RISC. CISC vs RISC has played out numerous times since the 1980s. CISC has won every time. I like the idea behind RISC, but its advantages don't seem to beat out the advantages of CISC when it comes to optimized processor performance. RISC seems to have an advantage when rapidly transitioning to new processing regimes (previously high-end data processing with MIPS, currently with low-power processing with ARM). But it's like once the transition has been made or slows down, CISC allows you to optimize it further, resulting in CISC beating out RISC long-term.
Actually the amount under debate is around $5 per device. There is a cap of $400 on the device after which the licensing fee doesn't increase. Think of it this way, Qualcomm decided that they should charge $10 license fee on their chips in phones, however cheap phone manufacturers, making phones for $100 would find it exorbitant, so they allow them to pay the license fee as a percentage of the phone price, but once the phone price goes beyond $400, the price is fixed at $10. Apple is trying to force qualcomm to reduce this fixed license fee by unscrupulously claiming that they are paying more for their more expensive phones, when in fact they are paying the same as what oneplus or samsung are paying for their $400 phones. As far as Intel stealing tech is concerned, it is widely known that Qualcomm provided Apple with deep source code access and Qualcomm has a ton of non-standard features which dramatically improve call quality and data rates in severe radio conditions, which is why the previous generation iPhones showed a 30% difference between Intel based and Qualcomm based iPhones in poor radio conditions. As far as the RF behaviour is concerned, Qualcomm used to work very closely with Apple during their RF testing with several Qualcomm engineers going on site to troubleshoot and fix issues, of course that is not happening any more. The last time they didn't use Qualcomm was iPhone 4 which was when the first antenna gate happened, and guess what, the next time they went without Qualcomm another antenna gate is in the offing.