Breaking up the Family - Qualcomm ruled a Monopoly, obligations imposed

[rcmaehl]

Sources:
ExtremeTech

Summary:
US Courts have ruled Qualcomm to be a monopoly. Could we see a break-up of the tech giant soon?

 

Quotes/Excerpts:

Quote

The FTC...brought a case against Qualcomm, alleging antitrust abuses and illegal behavior. In a ruling May 21, US District Court Judge Lucy Koh found that Qualcomm had violated the Federal Trade Commission Act. Qualcomm has pledged to immediately appeal the ruling, which has significant implications for its business structure and earnings. One of the major findings is that Qualcomm is not allowed to use its “no license, no chips” strategy that required customers to license Qualcomm patents in order to purchase its microprocessors. The company is also prohibited from striking exclusivity deals with companies like Apple, and from refusing to license its patents according to FRAND (Fair, Reasonable, and Non-Discriminatory) terms. “Qualcomm’s licensing practices have strangled competition in the CDMA and premium LTE modem chip markets for years, and harmed rivals, OEMs, and end consumers in the process,” Qualcomm is specifically required to meet the following obligations:

• Qualcomm must not condition the supply of modem chips on a customer’s patent license status and Qualcomm must negotiate or renegotiate license terms with customers in good faith under conditions free from the threat of lack of access to or discriminatory provision of modem chip supply or associated technical support or access to software.
• Qualcomm must make exhaustive SEP licenses available to modem-chip suppliers on fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (“FRAND”) terms and to submit, as necessary, to arbitral or judicial dispute resolution to determine such terms.
• Qualcomm may not enter express or de facto exclusive dealing agreements for the supply of modem chips.
• Qualcomm may not interfere with the ability of any customer to communicate with a government agency about a potential law enforcement or regulatory matter.
• In order to ensure Qualcomm’s compliance with the above remedies, the Court orders Qualcomm to submit to compliance and monitoring procedures for a period of seven (7) years. Specifically, Qualcomm shall report to the FTC on an annual basis Qualcomm’s compliance with the above remedies ordered by the Court.
   

Qualcomm was found to have made exclusivity deals with Apple, Blackberry, LGE, Samsung, and Vivo. It interfered with regulator investigations when it paid Samsung $100M to shut that company up. Qualcomm has a history of misbehavior, noting: “Qualcomm’s failure to alter its unlawful licensing practices despite years of foreign government investigations, findings, and fines suggests an obstinance that a monitoring provision may address.” Finally, Qualcomm is prohibited from charging its customers higher royalty rates if they opt to use a competitor’s chips. Judge Koh ruled there was evidence Qualcomm engaged in this practice. Qualcomm has already announced it will appeal the decision to the 9th Circuit and request a stay of the ruling pending appeal. Just Samsung and MediaTek as potential top-tier competitors for 5G modem designs...means Qualcomm could end up with a majority of 5G modem wins, just as they did in the LTE era, regardless of whether the FTC decision is ultimately upheld.

My Thoughts:

I'm happy this is happening. Most US phones are Snapdragon based while budget phones will have MediaTek chips. By having more mainstream or flagship devices with MediaTek chips this will likely spur development in the ROM community as XDA devs really only focus on the most popular (read: flagship) chips, which, at this moment, are a Snapdragon monopoly.

[Firewrath9]

They should have 4 people play monopoly, and whoever wins gets to have 1/2, 2nd place gets 1/4, 3rd gets 1/6, and last gets 1/12

[jiyeon]

1 hour ago, Firewrath9 said:

They should have 4 people play monopoly, and whoever wins gets to have 1/2, 2nd place gets 1/4, 3rd gets 1/6, and last gets 1/12

I remember back when I was about 9 and playing Monopoly with the family, I thought it was a wholesome family friendly boardgame.

That was, until I took business class in high school and learnt the cold hard truth of what a 'monopoly' was.

[Firewrath9]

7 minutes ago, seoz said:

I remember back when I was about 9 and playing Monopoly with the family, I thought it was a wholesome family friendly boardgame.

That was, until I took business class in high school and learnt the cold hard truth of what a 'monopoly' was.

lmao

thats why everything should be owned by the state

Quote

Spoiler

/s

 

 

[TOMPPIX]

fucking finally.

[Zodiark1593]

15 minutes ago, seoz said:

I remember back when I was about 9 and playing Monopoly with the family, I thought it was a wholesome family friendly boardgame.

That was, until I took business class in high school and learnt the cold hard truth of what a 'monopoly' was.

A company game of Monopoly would be the perfect team-breaking exercise. There is a feeling of victory in this game that lasts for some time that other board games cannot match.

[dizmo]

I really hope we don't see more flagship devices with Mediatek chips... 

[rcmaehl]

2 minutes ago, dizmo said:

I really hope we don't see more flagship devices with Mediatek chips... 

As much as Mediatek isn't the best. XDA devs really don't seem to give a crap about the chips as nothing flagship uses them. I'd hope this gives them a bit of a kick in the rear and helps bring LineageOS and other ROMs to a larger number of devices?

[dalekphalm]

Guys this is mostly about their modems, not the Snapdragon chips themselves. 

[rcmaehl]

5 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

Guys this is mostly about their modems, not the Snapdragon chips themselves. 

While true, their current monopoly has seemingly limited their modems to only mainly used in their own chips, apple aside

[Trixanity]

24 minutes ago, rcmaehl said:

As much as Mediatek isn't the best. XDA devs really don't seem to give a crap about the chips as nothing flagship uses them. I'd hope this gives them a bit of a kick in the rear and helps bring LineageOS and other ROMs to a larger number of devices?

It's the other way around. Mediatek doesn't give a shit about developers so there are no developer resources. Even the lowliest of Qualcomm chips see some development.

[Ithanul]

2 minutes ago, Trixanity said:

It's the other way around. Mediatek doesn't give a shit about developers so there are no developer resources. Even the lowliest of Qualcomm chips see some development.

Bingo.

 

30 minutes ago, rcmaehl said:

As much as Mediatek isn't the best. XDA devs really don't seem to give a crap about the chips as nothing flagship uses them. I'd hope this gives them a bit of a kick in the rear and helps bring LineageOS and other ROMs to a larger number of devices?

What you expect when Mediatek won't release source code to them?

 

Qualcomm uploads kernels to the CAF for the community.  Hence, why Snapdragons get more development.  Want to complain, complain at Mediatek.

 

An article that describes the issue, from XDE Dev site itself:  https://www.xda-developers.com/mediatek-source-code-release-no-plans/

[Commodus]

The funny thing is, I suspect Apple made peace with Qualcomm in part because it suspected this might happen.  It doesn't matter if Qualcomm is charging extortionate royalties for a short while if the company gets slapped with antitrust action that forces it to charge more reasonable rates.  Add to that Apple's plans for its own modems and it might not hurt to endure Qualcomm for a short while.

[Taf the Ghost]

28 minutes ago, Commodus said:

The funny thing is, I suspect Apple made peace with Qualcomm in part because it suspected this might happen.  It doesn't matter if Qualcomm is charging extortionate royalties for a short while if the company gets slapped with antitrust action that forces it to charge more reasonable rates.  Add to that Apple's plans for its own modems and it might not hurt to endure Qualcomm for a short while.

Apple has been in the process of vertically integrating their entire production, minus just a few things. They're going to make their own modem and almost assuredly had already started a while ago, but Qualcomm's patents are a problem. By Apple signing on, they've pretty much assured that Qualcomm does have an abusive monopoly. For as much as design has flagged under Tim Cook, he's had a really good read of the business environment.  It'll save Apple a lot more billions to break Qualcomm's patent portfolio than their settlement costs were. 

[Guest]

This could be great for Huawei 

[dalekphalm]

1 hour ago, rcmaehl said:

While true, their current monopoly has seemingly limited their modems to only mainly used in their own chips, apple aside

True - but the end likelihood is that their modem ends up in other chips. Not necessarily that other SoC's will see greater adoption.

 

I do wish Samsung pushed their Exynos chips more though.

[Trixanity]

1 hour ago, dalekphalm said:

True - but the end likelihood is that their modem ends up in other chips. Not necessarily that other SoC's will see greater adoption.

 

I do wish Samsung pushed their Exynos chips more though.

They'd need to make better chips though. Most of them are pretty mediocre and their custom work is relatively bad.

 

When you think of it it's pretty insane that Samsung took a $100 million bribe to not pursue the issue of selling chips to the open market. You'd think it'd be worth billions to do so.

[Donut417]

1 hour ago, floofer said:

This could be great for Huawei 

How? They have been pushed out of the US. One of the largest selling markets is no longer open to them. They are going to be hurting. Its not like the Chinese cared about patents in the US any way. They would have stolen the technology and used it regardless. 

[dalekphalm]

21 minutes ago, Trixanity said:

They'd need to make better chips though. Most of them are pretty mediocre and their custom work is relatively bad.

 

When you think of it it's pretty insane that Samsung took a $100 million bribe to not pursue the issue of selling chips to the open market. You'd think it'd be worth billions to do so.

Their high end chips aren't mediocre. They're somewhat close to the comparable Snapdragon.

[yolosnail]

20 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

Their high end chips aren't mediocre. They're somewhat close to the comparable Snapdragon.

A couple generations back they were ahead of Snapdragon, IIRC they actually had to throttle the Exynos chips back so the NA and International models were on par

 

Plus there have been a few Meizu phones that have used have used Exynos chips

[Trixanity]

42 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

Their high end chips aren't mediocre. They're somewhat close to the comparable Snapdragon.

Not at all. They're considerably worse. Performance is somewhat similar in CPU (finally) but it uses like 50% more power. It's ridiculous. The Mali GPUs are still far behind (although it seems the newly announced core design is much better) as well. 

 

It saddens me to say but Qualcomm simply has the best platform and the best ecosystem. That's why there has been some tolerance to their antics. You can get away with a less than stellar reputation if you're the best option in town.

[Results45]

I get why Qualcomm deserves an antitrust lawsuit, but doesn't Apple deserve one too!!!???

 

Half-a-dozen reasons why: 

Spoiler

.

On 5/10/2019 at 5:00 PM, Results45 said:

 

Man, something tells me that it's not that the overall user experience of Apple products is bad, but the seemingly nonsensical ways Apple goes about introducing features, cutting-costs, and being transparent (or not) about the design & support of their products.

 

A few from recent years:

• Being slow to integrate hardware features like Gorilla Glass, larger batteries, and OLED screens
• Maintaining minimalist or "sexy" design at the cost of I/O, build quality, and long-term system performance
• iPhone & iPad "Bendgate" (sub-par shell rigidity)
• Reduced SoC performance in the name of better power management
• Reduced durability of screen-to-body cables (as mentioned before)
• Imposing fear-culturing business practices on both supply-chain partners and service providers ~ both for bargain-rate production contracts and prevent losing market share to aftermarket replacement products.
• Forcing "full-destruction" of iPhones rather than letting recyclers reuse or re-sell functioning parts.

 

I understand that some of this is to be expected from a profit-milking, closed-ecosystem business model, but does Apple really need to go to these lengths?  

Don't forget flat out lying to their customers about things. Like whether or not your phone can be recovered or fixed from water damage.

 

*plot twist* It can. It absolutely can. A good place won't charge you unless the recovery succeeds (and they claim a 95% success rate). Apple claims "not physically possible", and will absolutely ban anyone who says otherwise from their community support forums.

 

Apple deserves a class action lawsuit. Potentially the biggest of all time considering their profit margin.

https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/1061112-imores-reply-to-linus-on-why-macs-are-slower-than-pcs/?do=findComment&comment=12557047

 

[dalekphalm]

2 minutes ago, Results45 said:

I get why Qualcomm deserves an antitrust lawsuit, but doesn't Apple deserve one too!!!???

 

Half-a-dozen reasons why: 

  Reveal hidden contents

.

.

Don't forget flat out lying to their customers about things. Like whether or not your phone can be recovered or fixed from water damage.

 

*plot twist* It can. It absolutely can. A good place won't charge you unless the recovery succeeds (and they claim a 95% success rate). Apple claims "not physically possible", and will absolutely ban anyone who says otherwise from their community support forums.

 

Apple deserves a class action lawsuit. Potentially the biggest of all time considering their profit margin.

https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/1061112-imores-reply-to-linus-on-why-macs-are-slower-than-pcs/?do=findComment&comment=12557047

 

Apple is having a lawsuit right now about their App Store.

 

On top of that, nothing you quoted would be reason for an antitrust lawsuit, or specifically, one about being a monopoly.

[Results45]

3 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

Apple is having a lawsuit right now about their App Store.

 

On top of that, nothing you quoted would be reason for an antitrust lawsuit, or specifically, one about being a monopoly.

 

I mean could they get sued by business partners or governments for having an iron-grip of fear over manufacturing partners and licensed service providers all in name of profit?

[dalekphalm]

Just now, Results45 said:

I mean could they get sued by business partners or governments for having an iron-grip of fear over manufacturing partners and licensed service providers all in name of profit?

I don't think so - that doesn't sound illegal.

 

There's certainly reason to dislike Apple, or it's closed ecosystem. That is good reason not to buy or use them. Not everyone values an "open" ecosystem though.