Apple, Qualcomm Settle Royalty Dispute (cnbc.com)

Apple and Qualcomm have settled their royalty dispute, the companies said on Tuesday. From a report: The settlement includes a payment from Apple to Qualcomm as well as a chipset supply agreement, suggesting that future iPhone may use Qualcomm chips. The two companies started proceedings in a trial in federal court in San Diego on Monday, which was expected to last until May. Both sides were asking for billions in damages. In November, Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf said that he believed that the two companies were on the "doorstep" to settling. Apple CEO Tim Cook contradicted him shortly after, saying that Apple hasn't been in settlement discussions since the third calendar quarter of 2018.

The complicated legal battle centered around modem chips and had been raging in courts around the world since 2016. For years, Apple bought modem chips from Qualcomm, but chafed under Qualcomm's prices and requirement that any company using its chips would also pay licensing fees for its patents. New iPhone models released in 2018 used Intel modem chips, and Apple said in a previous FTC trial that Qualcomm. UPDATE: Intel announced this afternoon that it plans to exit the 5G smartphone modem business, leaving Qualcomm as the only supplier for Apple's iPhones.

Comments

Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure if Apple plans on using its own radio hardware, but the Intel chips sucked including being about 2-3 dBm worse reception. The front end design in the ten plus also had issues, which can be seen straight from the FCC filing (6-7 dBm underperformance in receive) making the modem lose signal where older Apple phones with Qualcomm chips still worked ok. It was around the same time Apple removed the test mode and all software access to actual received cellular signal strength and only lets you see bars. Hopefully Apple brings Qualcomm chips back, one of the main things people use a phone for is the ability to send voice/data - or not as modern phones would work far better with 90s style antennas and apparently that's not an option.

Re:Apple is not a fair company.

[alvinrod]

All companies are greedy. If a company is trying to tell you that they aren't, they're liars as well as greedy.

Qualcom had a crappy bussiness model

[goombah99]

Actually it was a great bussiness model but not an ethical one-- possibly not even legal.

Promise FRAND licesncing in return for getting your patents made part of a standard.

Force companies to license your patents too if they want to be first in line for your chips. Add on things like a cut of the revenue of the devices the chips are used in. Definitely not FRAND. Sue them if they re-implement anything that evades the patent restrictions.

To make this stick you cut cozy deals with a few companies so that their competitors can't compete if they have to pay full price to Qualcom. Again, blowing the F in FRAND.