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Bandwidth-guzzling iPhone called "Hummer of cellphones" - Page 4

post #121 of 146
9/4/09 at 5:32am
Quote:
Originally Posted by mstone View Post

It will be a long time coming. Historically, the capacity of any new system is usually well behind the demand for it. One can look at hard drives, memory, or the interstate highway system as examples. As soon as more capacity is available the usage increases to fill it to the maximum. I can't wait for the jet packs and flying cars, that will be hilarious.

I'm going to sit it out for the first month of jet packs and flying cars, by that time I figure most of the idiots will have taken the Darwin route, and the skies should be much safer.
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post #122 of 146
9/4/09 at 7:03am
Quote:
Originally Posted by SuperMacGuy View Post

More like the Ferrari or Lamborghini of cell phones.
(May be a gas guzzler but goes like heck and everyone would have one if they could afford it.)

+1! But there are already a lot of iPhones around..
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post #123 of 146
9/4/09 at 9:15am
Quote:
Originally Posted by jodyfanning View Post

Are you totally off your rocker?

Revenue year ending 08.

Nokia, $71,485,887,000
Qualcomm, $11,142,000,000

I think there is a slight difference there.

Market Capitalization
Qualcomm: $75 billion
Nokia: $50 billion
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post #124 of 146
9/4/09 at 9:31am
Quote:
Originally Posted by jodyfanning View Post

It is not just "a new chip" they have to redesign the logic boards and all the RF parts inside the phone, it is a major cost.

And they would have to still keep a GSM/UMTS version for the other networks. So yes they would need two product lines.

And then how could everyone suddenly move to Verizon? They all have phones that only work in AT&T / T-Mobile. Don't tell me you think everyone is going to buy a new phone and pay to dump their existing contract?

People have stated that it would only cost Apple $5 million to design a CDMA version of iphone.

http://www.businessinsider.com/why-a...xt-year-2009-9

Chipset manufacturers do 99% of the work for you with reference designs and reference drivers. When you buy a no-name $5 sound card for your pc, you will find that the driver is the reference driver by the audio chipset manufacturer and the manual is written by the audio chipset manufacturer.
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post #125 of 146
9/4/09 at 8:12pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by samab View Post

People have stated that it would only cost Apple $5 million to design a CDMA version of iphone.

http://www.businessinsider.com/why-a...xt-year-2009-9

Chipset manufacturers do 99% of the work for you with reference designs and reference drivers. When you buy a no-name $5 sound card for your pc, you will find that the driver is the reference driver by the audio chipset manufacturer and the manual is written by the audio chipset manufacturer.

Too many iPhone models make it troublesome and unnecessaary.
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post #126 of 146
9/4/09 at 8:40pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by SGSStateStudent View Post

Too many iPhone models make it troublesome and unnecessaary.

Well, they are already making a china-only sans wifi iphone.

Or they could have make a true worldphone like the blackberries with ev-do/hsdpa chipset. As I already show you, the difference is not a lot of money.
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post #127 of 146
9/4/09 at 8:47pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by samab View Post

Well, they are already making a china-only sans wifi iphone.

Or they could have make a true worldphone like the blackberries with ev-do/hsdpa chipset. As I already show you, the difference is not a lot of money.

You really arent getting it.That Chinese iPhone with no WiFi is not being sold outside China. Youve said that the chip will not cost a lot more money, but you failed to report on the Qualcomm licensing for a CDMA-based device, the size of this chip in comparison to the current chip and the power efficiency in comparison to the current chip. All these things are very important to Apple and should be important to you if you are pushing this as the ultimate solution. You have to ask yourself, its so great, then why will there exact model phones that only differ in the radio communication chips in the device? The obvious answer is that the pro of including multiple radio communication technologies also has cons that dont necessarily make it ideal for every phone.
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post #128 of 146
9/4/09 at 9:08pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by stokessd View Post

They are charging me $40 a month for "DATA", the same as I pay for my comcast cable modem. The cable modem runs circles around the marginal 3G service I get from AT&T.

You don't see the irony of trying to compare a service that you buy that you can only use on one property with a service which you can use just about anywhere you reasonably go?

Quote:
Originally Posted by jodyfanning View Post

Are you totally off your rocker?

Revenue year ending 08.

Nokia, $71,485,887,000
Qualcomm, $11,142,000,000

I think there is a slight difference there.

To make a proper comparison of a particular industry, you need to not judge the entire company when much of it does not lie in that industry. For example, you don't compare the whole of Sansa with the whole of Apple in comparing who is bigger in the media player business, you only compare their take and volume in the one business you're discussing. Cut out the part of the business that's not making mobile chipsets and you probably nullify much of the difference. I'm pretty sure chipsets is just one division of Nokia. Qualcomm doesn't make the cell phones that I remember. Design, assembly and so on are different divisions.

Quote:
Originally Posted by SGSStateStudent View Post

Too many iPhone models make it troublesome and unnecessaary.

It seems to me like it would just be another driver. Apple supports more than one brand of WiFi chipsets in their Mac OS just fine, and they support multiple kinds of cellular connections with compatible drivers too.
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post #129 of 146
9/5/09 at 11:31am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Logisticaldron View Post

You really arent getting it.That Chinese iPhone with no WiFi is not being sold outside China. Youve said that the chip will not cost a lot more money, but you failed to report on the Qualcomm licensing for a CDMA-based device, the size of this chip in comparison to the current chip and the power efficiency in comparison to the current chip. All these things are very important to Apple and should be important to you if you are pushing this as the ultimate solution. You have to ask yourself, its so great, then why will there exact model phones that only differ in the radio communication chips in the device? The obvious answer is that the pro of including multiple radio communication technologies also has cons that dont necessarily make it ideal for every phone.

You are the person who aren't getting it.

Qualcomm charges the same patent licensing fee for both CDMA and WCDMA devices.

http://www.out-law.com/page-6280

Apple wants to cheap out on iphone parts. So they bought from chipset companies like Infineon who has a single digit market share. Nothing wrong with that, Apple is a for profit corporation and it is their right to make as much money as they want. But don't spin it like there are some greater technical concerns that are preventing Apple from doing that.
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post #130 of 146
9/5/09 at 11:57am
Quote:
Originally Posted by samab View Post

You are the person who aren't getting it.

Qualcomm charges the same patent licensing fee for both CDMA and WCDMA devices.

http://www.out-law.com/page-6280

Apple wants to cheap out on iphone parts. So they bought from chipset companies like Infineon who has a single digit market share. Nothing wrong with that, Apple is a for profit corporation and it is their right to make as much money as they want. But don't spin it like there are some greater technical concerns that are preventing Apple from doing that.

Besides your initial fallacy that CDMA equates to WCDMA you have also failed to address the other points I made as to why your idea is likely not a good a fit for Apple.
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post #131 of 146
9/5/09 at 1:08pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Logisticaldron View Post

Besides your initial fallacy that CDMA equates to WCDMA you have also failed to address the other points I made as to why your idea is likely not a good a fit for Apple.

What fallacy?

Qualcomm collects the same royalty rates for CDMA and WCDMA --- so your so-called extra-expensive licensing fee theory doesn't work.

The size of the chip --- it's an integrated chip that takes a lot fewer space than Apple using multiple chips setup. That's why a number of these phones are thinner than the iphone, despite the fact that they have physical keyboards.

Power efficiency --- nobody knows mobile chipsets more than Qualcomm, that's why they are the number 1 player in the mobile chipset industry. Are you saying that a small player like Infineon with a single digit market share knows more than Qualcomm. Many of the previous iphone clones have substantially smaller battery than the iphones.
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post #132 of 146
9/7/09 at 6:40pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by samab View Post

What fallacy?

Qualcomm collects the same royalty rates for CDMA and WCDMA --- so your so-called extra-expensive licensing fee theory doesn't work.

The size of the chip --- it's an integrated chip that takes a lot fewer space than Apple using multiple chips setup. That's why a number of these phones are thinner than the iphone, despite the fact that they have physical keyboards.

Power efficiency --- nobody knows mobile chipsets more than Qualcomm, that's why they are the number 1 player in the mobile chipset industry. Are you saying that a small player like Infineon with a single digit market share knows more than Qualcomm. Many of the previous iphone clones have substantially smaller battery than the iphones.

The fallacy that CDMA equates to W-CDMA. A 3G phone with CDMA/CDMA2000 gets Qualcomm massive royalties on both those technologies, while a 3G phone with GSM/W-CDMA gets Qualcomm very little comparative royalties from only a few of the cross patents in W-CDMA.

The whole reason for the move away from CDMA2000 to W-CDMA and from CDMA2000 to TD-SCDMA to pay less money for excessive patents. Qualcomm has been sued and suing for the few patents that are in W-CDMA. THey arent winning and they arent making money off W-CDMA like they would off a handset with CDMA and CMDA2000.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/1333...nance-nok-qcom
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post #133 of 146
9/7/09 at 11:34pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Logisticaldron View Post

The fallacy that CDMA equates to W-CDMA. A 3G phone with CDMA/CDMA2000 gets Qualcomm massive royalties on both those technologies, while a 3G phone with GSM/W-CDMA gets Qualcomm very little comparative royalties from only a few of the cross patents in W-CDMA.

The whole reason for the move away from CDMA2000 to W-CDMA and from CDMA2000 to TD-SCDMA to pay less money for excessive patents. Qualcomm has been sued and suing for the few patents that are in W-CDMA. THey aren’t winning and they aren’t making money off W-CDMA like they would off a handset with CDMA and CMDA2000.

— http://seekingalpha.com/article/1333...nance-nok-qcom

Did you even read the article I cited: the whole reason why Nokia was suing Qualcomm was that Qualcomm charges the same royalty rates for both cdma and wcdma. And both companies settled in 2008 when Nokia paid money to Qualcomm for a 15 year patent licensing deal.

"Qualcomm insists it should be paid the same royalty rate for WCDMA as CDMA, drawing protests from equipment makers who say that stance ignores engineering contributions from companies including Nokia, LM Ericsson (ERIC) and Motorola Inc. (MOT) If Qualcomm prevails, it can collect big licensing fees on the rapidly expanding pool of WCDMA carriers."

http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~...-attacked.html

Have you completely lost your mind? CDMA is down to what --- 10-15% of the world market share. So if Qualcomm is making much less money on WCDMA (they "won") --- then why is Qualcomm the largest mobile technology company by market capitalization.
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post #134 of 146
9/8/09 at 5:11am
Quote:
Originally Posted by samab View Post

If you look at the Blackberry Storm teardown, you will notice that the Qualcomm MSM7600 chip is the most expensive item at $35. But the MSM7600 is a dual CPU core chip which acts as both the baseband processor and the application processor. It also includes the GPS module and the Audio codec module within the MSM7600 chip.

If you look at the iphone 3Gs teardown:

http://www.isuppli.com/News/Pages/iP...-Reveals.aspx?

That's $14.46 for the application processor, $13 for the baseband processor, $2.25 for the GPS module and $1.15 for the Audio codec --- for a grand total of $30.86.

So the difference is $4.

Riiight. Nevermind that the MSM7600 is ARM11/ARM9 vs Cortex A8 on the 3GS and runs at 400/274 Mhz. The GSM Qualcom chips run 528Mhz on their ARM 11s.

So...the 3GS is $4 cheaper, has a primary processor that is a whole generation newer AND runs faster AND still has an additional dual ARM926/ARM7 baseband processor.

Nice apples to apples comparison there buddy.
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post #135 of 146
9/8/09 at 5:15am
Quote:
Originally Posted by samab View Post

Well, they are already making a china-only sans wifi iphone.

Or they could have make a true worldphone like the blackberries with ev-do/hsdpa chipset. As I already show you, the difference is not a lot of money.

But a huge hit on processing power.
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post #136 of 146
9/8/09 at 9:17am
Quote:
Originally Posted by vinea View Post

Riiight. Nevermind that the MSM7600 is ARM11/ARM9 vs Cortex A8 on the 3GS and runs at 400/274 Mhz. The GSM Qualcom chips run 528Mhz on their ARM 11s.

So...the 3GS is $4 cheaper, has a primary processor that is a whole generation newer AND runs faster AND still has an additional dual ARM926/ARM7 baseband processor.

Nice apples to apples comparison there buddy.

It was also a phone that was launched last year --- so it is not unexpected for the phone to have a slower CPU speed.

Qualcomm also has cortex-based snapdragon chip that goes 1 GHz, we just don't have any teardowns and pricing on it.

Unfortunately these are the only publicly known information on Qualcomm pricing --- for us amateurs to look at. Do you think that the Qualcomm snapdragon chipset would be vastly more expensive than their current chipset lineup? If not, then my argument still stands --- that it is (1) not a lot of money to design a CDMA iphone ($5 million) and (2) it is not a lot of money per iphone to buy the CDMA chipsets.
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post #137 of 146
9/8/09 at 11:34am
Quote:
Originally Posted by samab View Post

It was also a phone that was launched last year --- so it is not unexpected for the phone to have a slower CPU speed.

But also slower than GSM versions of simialr gen phones running ARM11. There's always a cost somewhere to do dual mode GSM/CDMA. If there were no costs associated everyone would use a dual mode chipset and skip having two versions of the same phone.

Quote:
Qualcomm also has cortex-based snapdragon chip that goes 1 GHz, we just don't have any teardowns and pricing on it.

The first snapdragons were available 4Q2008 and announced in 2007. I note that the Toshiba TG01 uses the QSD6250 rather than the dual band QSD8650. Gee, I wonder why if it's such a no brainer?

Quote:
Unfortunately these are the only publicly known information on Qualcomm pricing --- for us amateurs to look at. Do you think that the Qualcomm snapdragon chipset would be vastly more expensive than their current chipset lineup? If not, then my argument still stands --- that it is (1) not a lot of money to design a CDMA iphone ($5 million) and (2) it is not a lot of money per iphone to buy the CDMA chipsets.

And still zero need to build a CDMA iPhone if Verizon won't play ball, AT&T still has an exclusivity clause and while Apple is production limited on the 3GS...
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post #138 of 146
9/8/09 at 12:24pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by vinea View Post

But also slower than GSM versions of simialr gen phones running ARM11. There's always a cost somewhere to do dual mode GSM/CDMA. If there were no costs associated everyone would use a dual mode chipset and skip having two versions of the same phone.

The first snapdragons were available 4Q2008 and announced in 2007. I note that the Toshiba TG01 uses the QSD6250 rather than the dual band QSD8650. Gee, I wonder why if it's such a no brainer?

And still zero need to build a CDMA iPhone if Verizon won't play ball, AT&T still has an exclusivity clause and while Apple is production limited on the 3GS...

There are always going to be a performance hit with dual core cpus, it happens on desktop dual core cpu's as well.

It takes at least a few months for the cell phone manufacturers to pick up the brand new snapdragon chip, work on it and put it in a retail phone The TG01 is nowhere in sight in the US, that's why you don't see them with a dual band chip.

Why wouldn't Verizon play ball? Most of the idiotic demands like selling a $600 iphone without subsidy with a 2 year contract and revenue sharing are gone.
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post #139 of 146
9/8/09 at 1:05pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by samab View Post

There are always going to be a performance hit with dual core cpus, it happens on desktop dual core cpu's as well.

The comment was about dual-mode chips, not dual-core CPUs. You still havent taken into account the cost difference for the same chip f it even exists, the size and power efficiency variances.

Quote:
Why wouldn't Verizon play ball?

You even posted that Verizon didnt want to play ball. The cost of the device wasnt the issue as prior to the iPhone there were more than few higher-end smartphone phones topping out past a grand. The problem was the HW vendor wanting to control the HW. That hasnt changed!
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post #140 of 146
9/8/09 at 1:23pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Logisticaldron View Post

The comment was about dual-mode chips, not dual-core CPUs. You still havent taken into account the cost difference for the same chip f it even exists, the size and power efficiency variances.

You even posted that Verizon didnt want to play ball. The cost of the device wasnt the issue as prior to the iPhone there were more than few higher-end smartphone phones topping out past a grand. The problem was the HW vendor wanting to control the HW. That hasnt changed!

But you were talking about MHz and so that had more to do with dual core.

And how well do these thousand dollar smartphone sells. Verizon doesn't control their own smartphones.
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post #141 of 146
9/8/09 at 1:30pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by samab View Post

But you were talking about MHz and so that had more to do with dual core.

And how well do these thousand dollar smartphone sells. Verizon doesn't control their own smartphones.

I never mentioned MHz, and its quite irrelevant to Vineas mention of the chip architecture differences between ARMv6 (ARM11) and ARMv7 (Cortex A8).

Still, there are always tradeoffs when you combine such chips. SIze, cost, power efficiency to name a few. I cant imagine you dont know that these are important aspects to Apple.

You are right that Apple COULD use an CDMA/CDMA2000//GSM/W-CDMA chip in a larger iPhone at a higher cost with worse power efficiency, but is that a reasonable thing to expect from Apple, or all companies? If this chip is so ideal why do the cellphone vendors that do make phones for all major carriers not use this chip across their product line if its so much better?
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post #142 of 146
9/8/09 at 1:54pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Logisticaldron View Post

You are right that Apple COULD use an CDMA/CDMA2000//GSM/W-CDMA chip in a larger iPhone at a higher cost with worse power efficiency, but is that a reasonable thing to expect from Apple, or all companies? If this chip is so ideal why do the cellphone vendors that do make phones for all major carriers not use this chip across their product line if its so much better?

We don't know the exact performance stat on the snapdragon because qualcomm has been late for more than 1 year on delivering it.

But what I can tell you is that the first couple of generations of iphone clones that were on Verizon's network --- had smaller batteries and was thinner.
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post #143 of 146
9/8/09 at 2:02pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by samab View Post

We don't know the exact performance stat on the snapdragon because qualcomm has been late for more than 1 year on delivering it.

Are you suggesting that we should have waited on an iPhone until Qualcomm could deliver this chip to Apple?

Quote:
But what I can tell you is that the first couple of generations of iphone clones that were on Verizon's network --- had smaller batteries and was thinner.

Ive never read about these clones, but its irrelevant as it doesnt mean that the device had the same duration of use as the current their current offerings nor would have been as efficient as a CDMA/CDMA2000//GSM/W-CDMA iPhone.
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post #144 of 146
9/8/09 at 2:27pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Logisticaldron View Post

Are you suggesting that we should have waited on an iPhone until Qualcomm could deliver this chip to Apple?

No, I am saying that we don't know what we don't know.

If there are performance problems, Apple could have used "traditional" set-up with separate application processor and baseband processor with a CDMA radio.

This whole discussion started because someone said that including a qualcomm chip would add $40 per phone. It would only cost Apple $5 million to design it and it is not going to cost a lot more per unit to make a CDMA variant.
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post #145 of 146
9/8/09 at 11:41pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Logisticaldron View Post

Are you suggesting that we should have waited on an iPhone until Qualcomm could deliver this chip to Apple?

If we did so I wonder when would we get an iPhone..
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post #146 of 146
9/9/09 at 6:28am
Oh yes AT&T I really feel for you. You're multi-billion dollar iPhone gem is such a hog, and users are so selfish and needy....

No....I pay AT&T over $250 a month for 3 people. They can go take a flying _ _ _ _ at the moon. I deserve every bit of bandwidth I can get and more. I'm PAYING for it.
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