Apple and Qualcomm’s Billion-Dollar War Over an $18 Part
That&#x27;s a very one-sided pro-Qualcomm piece.<p>The big issue with Qualcomm IP practice is that they don&#x27;t charge IPR on the modem function, but over the whole device. So put the same modem in a cheap phone, or in an expensive laptop, and the IPR will be very different. This is really charging IPR on a lot of value completely unrelated to the modem.<p>Historically, the cellular&#x2F;3GPP world was very phone centric. The specs were for a phone, and the chipset was really the core of the phone. At that time, charging cellular IPR on the device embedding the chipset was reasonable: the device was just a phone, with all the intelligence coming from the chipset.<p>We&#x27;re obviously no longer living in such a world. But Qualcomm keeps this practice, as it&#x27;s very profitable for them and their dominant position let them do it (so far). Apple is mad at this, as most of the value of a smartphone is outside of the modem part nowadays (even more for a PC). Other device makers hate it too, but don&#x27;t have the muscle to go against QCOM and can&#x27;t afford alienating them. Europe is looking into it too, and will issue a recommendation that cellular IPR is charge only on the modem subsystem, not the including device (basically, Apple position). It will start as a recommendation, but could become law later on.<p>So it looks like it&#x27;s QCOM against everybody else. Considering the money involved, I&#x27;m sure that QCOM has a pretty fat budget to push their angle. Hello Bloomberg ;)