Qualcomm Loses Legal Battle Against BlackBerry

[ThePointblank]

While Qualcomm is in the midst of a legal battle with Apple, it lost a binding arbitration case with BlackBerry, with BlackBerry being awarded $815 million USD, plus interest and legal fees, and a cap on certain royalty payments.

 

From Ars Technica:

 

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/04/qualcomm-loses-legal-battle-with-blackberry-must-pay-815m/

 

Quote

BlackBerry has won $815 million in an arbitration battle against Qualcomm over royalty payments, the company said today. The award also will include interest and attorneys' fees, which have not yet been determined.

Little detail is available about the proceedings, which ended on March 3 but were only made public today. Essentially Qualcomm agreed to put a cap on certain royalty payments, and there was a disagreement over whether or not that cap applied to some large payments made by BlackBerry, which uses Qualcomm chips in its phones.

 

 

[DoctorZeus]

2 minutes ago, Nicholatian said:

You would think with how much more open ARM Holdings is, we would have more chip manufacturers than Qualcomm and what, Nvidia? They made the chip for the Switch, which is ARM… regardless, some more competition would be greatly welcomed please.

and samsung

[WashMachine]

1 minute ago, Nicholatian said:

You would think with how much more open ARM Holdings is, we would have more chip manufacturers than Qualcomm and what, Nvidia? They made the chip for the Switch, which is ARM… regardless, some more competition would be greatly welcomed please.

How about samsung ? MTK ?

 

[PCGuy_5960]

5 minutes ago, Nicholatian said:

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure Samsung makes chips for themselves, not everyone under the sun. They’re hardly competition like that.

Actually, some Chinese companies (I think one of them is called Meizu) use Samsung chips in their smartphones....

[zMeul]

5 minutes ago, Nicholatian said:

Never heard of them, sorry.

MediaTek

[WashMachine]

Just now, Nicholatian said:

 

 

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure Samsung makes chips for themselves, not everyone under the sun. They’re hardly competition like that.

Never heard of them, sorry.

 

Nop samsung is manufacturing Apple chips. but they use exynos only in their products. Because qualcomm is kinda at the top. MTK - MediaTek. Also on the list HiSilicon (kirin) 

[PCGuy_5960]

1 minute ago, WashMachine said:

Nop samsung is manufacturing Apple chips. 

Nvidia's GP107 (1050 and 1050 Ti) are made by Samsung as well

[DocSwag]

16 minutes ago, Nicholatian said:

 

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure Samsung makes chips for themselves, not everyone under the sun. They’re hardly competition like that.

Never heard of them, sorry.

Samsung, mediatek, Apple (though only for themselves).

[2FA]

In other news, major chip maker common OEM. More on that story at 11.

[Belgarathian]

Here we go.... Apple, Samsung, and pretty much every other manufacturer to follow. Would be a shit time to own Qualcomm shares. 

[Belgarathian]

1 hour ago, Nicholatian said:

 

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure Samsung makes chips for themselves, not everyone under the sun. They’re hardly competition like that.

Never heard of them, sorry.

 

43 minutes ago, DocSwag said:

Samsung, mediatek, Apple (though only for themselves).

Apple, Samsung, etc may manufacture their own CPUs, but the will be using Qualcomm modems and patents. 

[vorticalbox]

1 hour ago, Nicholatian said:

You would think with how much more open ARM Holdings is, we would have more chip manufacturers than Qualcomm and what, Nvidia? They made the chip for the Switch, which is ARM… regardless, some more competition would be greatly welcomed please.

intel has their atom cpus that they have tried to break into the market but haven't managed it. There a few phones around that run on atoms. 

[vorticalbox]

9 minutes ago, Nicholatian said:

I have one of those, yeah. But I thought they discontinued mobile x86?

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/smartphones/smartphones.html

 

product page is still up. 

[Trixanity]

2 hours ago, Nicholatian said:

 

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure Samsung makes chips for themselves, not everyone under the sun. They’re hardly competition like that.

Never heard of them, sorry.

That's because Qualcomm has blocked Samsung from selling their chips for 25 years as to not compete against Qualcomm (I don't think it affects the Chinese market hence Meizu have been able to buy). That was in 1993, so the agreement expires next year. I wonder what will happen then. That coupled with the US moving away from CDMA within a couple of years; suddenly Qualcomm's stranglehold is gone.

[dizmo]

4 hours ago, WashMachine said:

Nop samsung is manufacturing Apple chips. but they use exynos only in their products. Because qualcomm is kinda at the top. MTK - MediaTek. Also on the list HiSilicon (kirin) 

There are other companies that use Exynos chips.

2 hours ago, Trixanity said:

That's because Qualcomm has blocked Samsung from selling their chips for 25 years as to not compete against Qualcomm (I don't think it affects the Chinese market hence Meizu have been able to buy). That was in 1993, so the agreement expires next year. I wonder what will happen then. That coupled with the US moving away from CDMA within a couple of years; suddenly Qualcomm's stranglehold is gone.

Really? That's interesting. I didn't know they had an agreement like that. I'd love to see more phones with Exynos chips.

[Trixanity]

19 minutes ago, dizmo said:

There are other companies that use Exynos chips.

Really? That's interesting. I didn't know they had an agreement like that. I'd love to see more phones with Exynos chips.

While it could be false, it's only fairly recently that it made the rounds in the media (like 2-3 weeks ago). It came out because Qualcomm is being fined in Korea.

 

Apparently it pertains to modem patents and since Samsung integrates their modems on their SoCs, their SoCs are blocked. I guess it's possible to disable the integrated modem and add a discrete modem to the logic board like Apple does but at that point it'd probably be cheaper to either buy Qualcomm or go Mediatek with whatever modem you can muster. It's unclear if there are other parts of the chip besides the modem that's being blocked. The details of the deal are not known.

 

I really hope the market gets flooded with Exynos chips in 2018/2019 so that Qualcomm gets some much needed competition. Mediatek has a hard time competing but today's Samsung is a powerhouse and could go toe-to-toe with them. Now the question is if Samsung intends to sell chips to other companies or stick with the status quo.

[nephilim2]

16 hours ago, Nicholatian said:

 

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure Samsung makes chips for themselves, not everyone under the sun. They’re hardly competition like that.

Never heard of them, sorry.

Mediatek, and also RockChip.

 

But more to the point, it's not the cores or even GPU tech which are the problems. Qualcomm and Intel are basically the only 2 big LTE modem makers, and even Intel is struggling because of all the market manipulation Qualcomm's done, as well as a lot of lobbying to knock out up and comers.

[dizmo]

On 2017-04-12 at 6:49 PM, Trixanity said:

I really hope the market gets flooded with Exynos chips in 2018/2019 so that Qualcomm gets some much needed competition. Mediatek has a hard time competing but today's Samsung is a powerhouse and could go toe-to-toe with them. Now the question is if Samsung intends to sell chips to other companies or stick with the status quo.

I think it depends mostly on production numbers. If they can produce enough, they'll sell them. Also company interest. In the budget space Mediatek has a pretty good hold. Meizu buys Exynos processors, so that won't be too much of an issue. These days pretty much only the US is supplied with Snapdragon via Samsung, so I don't see any reason why they wouldn't be selling them to other companies.

[Bit_Guardian]

Hopefully with this loss it'll domino into the Samsung, Apple, and Intel lawsuits. It's about time Qualcomm got taken down a peg and was made to truly compete again.