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Qualcomm Accuses Apple of Stealing Trade Secrets and Giving Them To Intel (betanews.com)

Posted by msmash on from the he-said-she-said dept.

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."

13 of 100 comments (clear)

  1. Who isn't? by TexasDiaz · · Score: 2

    Apple stands accused of engaging in a 'multi-year campaign of sloppy, inappropriate and deceitful conduct'.

    Duh. What multi-billion dollar company isn't [rightfully] accused of this?

    1. Re:Who isn't? by sinij · · Score: 3, Funny

      Costco

      This guy buys in bulk.

      I hate it when they move trade secrets into a different isle and don't tell you where to find them. You would think they are trying to hide them. I then have to wander the entire store looking for where they moved them. Just last week they moved Qualcomm trade secrets from next to cat litter and detergent into next to frozen food section.

  2. Re: I don't use Apple, but Qualcomm is a shit comp by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

  3. Re:Obligatory Seinfeld by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Qualcomm to Intel: Stop using our move

    Intel: Oh, that modulation was *so* obvious. We would have figured it out anyway. We didn't need Apple to tell us that stupid twist.

    Qualcomm: Swirl

    Intel: Whatever, we don't do it anyway

  4. Re:Proof is in the Pudding... by known_coward_69 · · Score: 3, Informative

    https://www.wiwavelength.com/

    Sites are starting to link to this guy

  5. Re:The funny thing... by GabeGhearing · · Score: 4, Informative

    Extremetech's article seems to be mostly mistaken. Intel's Sunny Peak project that Apple isn't using isn't a 5G modem, it's a WiFi/Bluetooth chipset.
    https://www.theregister.co.uk/...

  6. Well, if only if.... by registrations_suck · · Score: 2

    Maybe if Qualcomm hadn't wanted ridiculous royalties from Apple, it wouldn't have this problem.

    1. Re: Well, if only if.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.

  7. Re:That's the sound of desperation. by Austerity+Empowers · · Score: 2

    (Why would Samsung do this when they have their own chip fab? Think about it)

    Chip fabs are factories. Developing an SoC requires a large and fairly expensive design team, a larger validation team, and then someone has to write a lot of software. Not that I don't believe Samsung could put this together, in fact I believe they have one here in Austin. But when you deal in commodities, you tend to take the cheapest route from a->b and don't look too far down the road.

  8. Abysmal quadrupling of datarate! by k2r · · Score: 2

    I‘m not an antenna guru but the bad antenna’ seems to affect the datarate quite nicely:

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/g...

  9. Re:That's the sound of desperation. by guruevi · · Score: 5, Informative

    Samsung also has it's own SoC's (which I think what the parent was trying to say) - the Exynos. They only recently developed a decent modem for it in order to cut out QualComm at some point.

    Having done business with QualComm (small electronics developer) I can concur that they're absolutely a horrible company to work with and will happily violate the GPL - they won't give you any Linux source code for "their" SoC reference compilation and then happily point you to the NDA. Oh you want a newer kernel - pay up for a newer chipset because we won't do it on our 2-year old chips.

    --
    Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
  10. Re:The funny thing... by Solandri · · Score: 3, Interesting
    This isn't about picking Intel over Qualcomm. The allegation (which I'm not qualified to judge if it has merit) is that Apple doesn't like paying higher prices to the one player dominating the market, so is trying to help give a competitor a leg up. The long-term plan being if Intel's chipset improves enough to become a viable alternative to Qualcomm's, the two will compete with each other and lower their prices. Basically like if some company were to sell hardware which could install MacOS on instead of having to buy a Mac. (MacOS will actually run on most PC hardware - the Macs are just PCs running a different OS. It's only Apple's software license which prohibits MacOS from being sold or installed onto generic PC hardware.)

    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.

    Apple will also move away from x86 towards their own desktop/laptop ARM processors.

    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.

  11. Re:Qualcomm's not wrong by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 2

    If you live in an area where the signals are strong and the towers are near, you will see no difference between Qualcomm and Intel modems.

    If you live further away from the towers, where signals are weaker and interference more of a problem, you would soon find out that the Qualcomm chips are much more capable than the Intel ones.

    --
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