Qualcomm Says Tech Group Supporting Apple is 'Misdirecting' ITC With 'Coordinated Effort'

Oh, the irony. Apple takes, what, 30% for in-app purchases? That's what I call "taxing the innovation of others."

Well that 30% provides you quite a lot, marketting, distribution, support and resources to help develop your apps.
Considering what people get for that 30% it's a pretty good deal. Compare that to publishers in other industries, music, books etc and it's damn good.

Qualcomm chose to go after them all in such a manner. Now they are complaining that the counterpunch is coming at the same time from all their extortees?

I'd be pissed if I was a Qualcomm stock holder... luckily I am not. Qualcomm is trying to ensure they're irrelevant by 2020.

You know they're in trouble when their public statements sound like Sean Spicer.

True, but you should also check out Apple's lawsuits ;)

They read like some Appleinsider articles: they start with a bogus conclusion and work backwards, using the conclusion as "evidence".

E.g. the rate is too high for us, we're only making hundreds of billions in profit, woe is us. We need even more profit margin next year or Wall Street will diss Tim Cook. Can't have that. We only want to pay what we want to. Therefore we don't think the asking rate is fair. Therefore it must not be FRAND. Therefore wanting us to pay the same rate everyone else has paid for decades, is Apple extortion.

As if Apple would lower their prices to buyers and pass on the savings. Sure :rolleyes:. Now, a lot of people here constantly claim that making high profits is a good thing. If so, then that applies to all companies, not just Apple.

A savvy user might prefer that any extra money went towards Qualcomm's 5/6G future R&D, which will benefit all of us the same as it did with 3/4G, rather than just get stashed away into Apple's offshore shell companies' bank accounts, never to be seen again. :eek:

Well that 30% provides you quite a lot, marketting, distribution, support and resources to help develop your apps.
Considering what people get for that 30% it's a pretty good deal. Compare that to publishers in other industries, music, books etc and it's damn good.

Pffft. 99% of apps in the App Store are never featured, so receive no marketing. And what support and resources are you talking about? Developers pay $100 per year for an Apple developer account, which gets you access to development resources and "support". I put support in quotes because you don't get any direct access to Apple engineers or support, but rather a support forum where most questions only get answered by other paying developers, not by Apple themselves. So if we're already paying $100 a year for resources and "support", what does that extra 30% of our revenue go to again? Distribution, which could probably be covered by 1-5% of app revenue, and the other 25-29% just lines Apple's pockets. It is not a "pretty good deal" for anyone but Apple. It's their platform and product we're developing for, so they have every right to charge whatever percentage they want, but what they charge far outweighs the benefits, services, and resources they provide.

Qualcomm chose to go after them all in such a manner. Now they are complaining that the counterpunch is coming at the same time from all their extortees?

It's less about Qualcomm than about simple self preservation.

Everyone in that organization is thinking forward to the next time that someone goes to the ITC about banning THEM. So they want to discourage import bans in general.

Likewise, this exact same group lobbied the Supreme Court to rule for Samsung and against Apple in that recent design patent reward appeal. (Which SCOTUS did.). That was because they all saw themselves as possibly being in the same infringement situation one day.

Companies looking out for their own future interests.

If I lived there i would be trying to escape. What i'm saying is, look at the real threat that some can't seem to see.

You keep changing the subject to China. And it's not just this thread, either. Maybe you should be spending more of your time on a political forum instead? Here, you just sound obsessive and paranoid.

So qualcomm charge a percentage?

Yes, the same rate method that Nokia, Ericsson, Samsung, Motorola, LG, et al use.

Despite what Apple wants, the pricing method is not the issue other companies are that concerned with. Even the China government... who can do almost anything they wish... recently agreed for Qcom to continue that method.

Their complaints are about things like not getting fair trade for their patents, and having to license all Qcom's IP even if they only use some.

So qualcom will get more for the chip if it is in a iPhone 7 plus 256gb then a iPhone SE 32gb. And its the same chip?

Has nothing to do with the cost of chips. It's about the value their IP adds, relative to the cost of the phone.

In a similar fashion, Apple charges higher priced apps more royalties even though the only increase in Apple's cost is a minor increase in the money transfer fee.

In both situations, higher priced products subsidize the lower cost ones. And in both cases, it's the quantity of lower priced ones which enables the market to be big enough to be profitable for makers.

Well that 30% provides you quite a lot, marketting, distribution, support and resources to help develop your apps.

A lot of developers would argue that 30% doesn't buy much in unique advertising or discovery. And for companies that could host their own app store, being locked to Apple's garden is an extra cost.

Qualcomm's 3.25% gets you 3G/4G technology born out of spending decades and billions in R&D. Hell of a lot more value, relatively speaking.

I've been following the debate very closely, but this is the first time I ever see this (anti-) logic above.

Don't just follow forum debates. Do lots and lots of your own reading and research. At the very least, read several of Apple's legal complaints.

Their lawyers have been using the same argument style for years, where they propose their desired solution as the only appropriate one, and then work backwards with the assumption that everything else must be illegal. Along the way they throw in all sorts of cleverly worded partial truths to add to the confusion.

Judges have called them out on this at times, telling them that they can't take just a desired supposition and use it as proof of wrongdoing.

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A great example of their current handwaving is the neat-o phrase "no license, no chips". Since it's delivered in an accusatory way, our brain automatically assumes it must be a bad thing.

But sit back and think about what it means. It simply means that Qualcomm won't sell you their own chips unless you agree to get a license for their IP. Well, duh. Why would they sell anyone a chip to use, if that someone has no intention of also paying for the IP to run on it ?!

The supposed "evilness" of this stems from Apple's desire that chips should come with all possible IP included in their price. In reality, this is actually often not true. If I buy a CPU from Intel, it does not come with a license for Intel's realtime OS. Static IP value is separate from silicon cost.

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Another example is all the times that Apple's lawyers have declared that companies are "refusing to offer FRAND terms", when all that really means is that they're not offering terms low enough for Apple, and therefore Apple thinks it's unfair.. even if it's the same terms everyone else pays. But it sounds so much more evil when you throw some extra words in.

Apple has accused many companies of that FRAND one, including at the least, Nokia, Samsung and Motorola. I betcha Ericsson as well.

Again, they've been called out this before in rulings, with judges noting that Apple does not get to unilaterally decide what is a fair rate or not.

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The upshot is, Apple's lawyers love creating clever sound bites that they know reporters and fans will repeat, and juries remember. Gotta admit, they're pros at it!

How many companies make modem technology suitable for use in IPhones? Does Apple have only Intel and Qualcomm to choose from?