Apple CEO Tim Cook is set to attend a deposition in the ongoing Apple v. Qualcomm legal battle on June 27, according to Bloomberg.
Cook will be providing testimony as part of Qualcomm's lawsuit against Apple, which accuses the Cupertino-based company of lying to regulators to cause trouble for Qualcomm, leading to investigations in multiple countries.
The United States Federal Trade Commission in January accused Qualcomm of violating the FTC Act by using anticompetitive tactics and abusing its patent portfolio to remain the dominant supplier of LTE chips for smartphones, and in June, a judge ruled that Qualcomm will face an antitrust lawsuit.
Qualcomm has also faced an antitrust investigation in South Korea, which it accused Apple of interfering in, and it has been fined $1.2 billion by European antitrust regulators for paying Apple to use its LTE chips in iOS devices. In South Korea, Qualcomm was fined 1.03 trillion won, or $902 million.
Qualcomm and Apple have been mired in an ever-escalating legal battle since the beginning of 2017 after Apple levied a $1 billion lawsuit against Qualcomm accusing the company of charging unfair royalties for "technologies they have nothing to do with."
Apple and Apple suppliers have stopped paying licensing fees to Qualcomm in the midst of the lawsuit, and Apple has maintained that Qualcomm's practice of charging a percentage of an iPhone's entire value is excessive. Qualcomm, meanwhile, says its technology is "at the heart of every iPhone."
Following Apple's lawsuit, Qualcomm filed a countersuit accusing Apple of breaching licensing agreements, making false statements, and encouraging regulatory attacks against Qualcomm in several countries.
Qualcomm has since sought import bans on some iPhones in the United States and export bans against the device in China, with Apple retaliating through further patent infringement lawsuits.
Given the legal dispute between the two companies, rumors have suggested Apple is considering eliminating Qualcomm chips from its future devices, instead relying on Intel and MediaTek.
Top Rated Comments
Apple CEO Tim Cook to Be Deposed
then saw the rest :p
A percentage of the cost allows a low cost handset to be made and not have it increase in cost for licensing fees.
This allows emerging markets to have the technology.
Apple agreed to it and now finds it onerous because an iPhone can cost $1k with Qualcomm getting a percentage that Apple now feels that Qualcomm is not entitled to.
Everyone else in the industry pays those fees. Samsung, LG, Essential and anyone else using a Qualcomm modem, to name just a few. Everyone pays the same for Qualcomm licenses.
For example, here is their structure for 5G from EE-Times -> https://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1332657 and from Qualcomm -> https://www.qualcomm.com/invention/licensing.
"Ericsson announced plans to license its 5G IP for $5 per handset, but indicated that this could go as low as $2.50 in emerging markets. Now, Qualcomm has also announced rates for 5G that also shed some light on other aspects of the company’s licensing model.
Qualcomm announced that it will license 5G standard essential patents (SEPs) for stand-alone mode branded phones at 2.275 percent of the wholesale price of the phone and 3.25 percent for multimode (2G/3G/4G/5G) phones. Tirias Research estimates the wholesale price at approximately 65 percent of the sale price of the phone.
Additionally, Qualcomm will license its entire portfolio of patents for 4 percent for stand-alone mode and 5 percent for multimode. The SEPs are required to build a basic phone, but the entire portfolio covers the applications, operation and other features of most phones, which is why most OEMs choose to license the entire portfolio.
These are the same rates Qualcomm used for licensing 4G IP and the rates approved by the Chinese NDRC for all 4G/LTE phones sold in China. As a result, the rates have been in use and unchanged by any government regulatory agencies. This is important because the licensing rates are a key issue in Qualcomm’s dispute with Apple."
For Ericsson, the incremental cost of a low cost phone can be pretty high.
On a $25 wholesale phone, Ericsson can be 10% of the cost at $2.50. That can rise to $5 on a high end phone but is capped. So Ericsson gets only 1% on a $500 phone.
For Qualcomm the incremental cost on a phone in emerging markets is pretty low.
On a $25 wholesale price, even a multimode phone is about $.80. So the impact on low cost phones is pretty low.
At about $150 for the phone Ericsson and Qualcomm get about the same $5.
Since Ericsson is capped at $5 they get no more at a $800 price point.
Qualcomm on the other hand would get $26 for the same $800 handset.
This means that it's expensive to use Ericsson tech in low cost handsets and the opposite in high cost handsets.
For Qualcomm it means that they get very little for cheap handsets and expensive handsets bear the cost for emerging markets.
The key here is everyone is paying the same percentage.
Qualcomm is not gouging Apple individually.
The usage as "give a deposition" is legal jargon, and while correct much less common usage for the word unless you're already in a legal context.
Also, in American english at least, an active voice is more common than a passive voice. "I took a test at school today" vs "I was tested at school today". Both are valid English sentences with the same meaning but the first one sounds more proper to an American ear. Same as "I gave a deposition today" vs "I was deposed today". The first one in the active voice sounds more proper even though both are right.
So yeah, the headline was chosen to be sensationalist and make people misread it the first time.