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Qualcomm Says It Won Case Banning Sale of Older iPhones in China (bloomberg.com)
Qualcomm says it has won a ruling in China against Apple that bans the sale of some iPhone models in that country. From a report: The Fuzhou Intermediate People's Court ruled that Apple is infringing two Qualcomm patents and issued injunctions against the sale of the iPhone 6S, iPhone 6S Plus, iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone X, the San Diego, California-based chipmaker said in a statement Monday. The most recent models introduced in September, the iPhone XS, XR and XS Max, are not covered by the ban.
Is this a coincidence that this injunction has occurred just in the last week since the VP at Huawei Technologies was arrested in Canada, British Columbia. Is this a tit for tat?
What's missing from the summary is the fact that, in addition to not covering this year's models, this injunction doesn't bar sales of any iPhone running iOS 12, which is the latest version of iOS. Given that every model Apple currently sells can be updated to iOS 12 (and were likely being sold with iOS 12 installed, straight out of the box, even prior to this ruling), Apple has issued a statement making it clear that all iPhones remain available for purchase in China. I.e. This injunction did absolutely nothing at all.
As for what Qualcomm's patents are/were covering, MacRumors' article indicates they were used to "adjust and reformat the size and appearance of photos", for "managing applications using a touch screen when viewing and navigating apps", and a third patent of which has apparently already been invalidated in court.