Apple holds commanding lead over Qualcomm in 3D sensing tech development by nearly two yea...

AppleInsider

A new analyst report claims that Apple holds up to a two year lead on rival Qualcomm, when it comes to software and hardware development of accurate 3D sensing systems -- and no Android product developer seems that willing to host the technology in the foreseeable future.

According to a research note by KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, seen by AppleInsider, Qualcomm is the "most engaged" in developing 3D sensing systems for Android. However, Kuo doesn't see integrated systems shipping until 2019 because of immature algorithms, and "design and thermal issues" associated with a variety of hardware reference designs.

Further, Android device makers are taking a "wait and see" approach to 3D sensing, Kuo says. In particular, manufacturers are uncertain that Apple's upcoming "iPhone 8," which is expected to deliver a facial recognition system, can deliver an innovative user experience. Vendors are concerned that 3D sensing could be a nonstarter like Apple's 3D Touch, pressure sensitive input technology first deployed in the iPhone 6s.

At present, Kuo believes that reticence to adopt the technology from Qualcomm will limit the technology to Xiaomi's 2018 flagship, which will result in no more than 10 million shipments, if it ships before 2019 at all.

Where TSMC, Xintec, VisEra, and Heptagon are slated as individual components suppliers of the technology to Apple, the report sources from the supply chain claims that Qualcomm is working on software by itself, with Himax trying to single-handedly develop the hardware. As a result of differences in hardware design, and in a bid to secure adequate resources, Qualcomm appears to be actively avoiding Apple suppliers.

Most reports have indicated that Apple is planning to launch three new iPhones this year. Though two of them are thought to be LCD-based "iPhone 7s" models, sized at 4.7- and 5.5-inches, the "iPhone 8" has been rumored as having an edge-to-edge, 5.8-inch OLED screen, with sensors for 3D facial recognition and possibly iris scanning in a "notch" on the front of the display. Part of the display is likely reserved for virtual buttons, replacing a physical home button -- but Touch ID may be not present in the device.

coolfactor

Looking forward to September. Going to be exciting to see what Apple has developed.

SpamSandwich

LOL... Ming-Chi Kuo. Whatever!   Analysts spinning events in their favor ever since AAPL stock started trading.

EngDev

Definitely looking forward to see what Apple can do with the new iPhone in the Fall.

ManyMacsAgo

sog35 said:

This makes me laugh.

I remember last year when Google/Facebook all were spewing that phone hardware isn't that important. Its the software.  LOL. Duh, a software company would say its software is most important. WRONG BITCH.

Hardware is equally as important as software. They both need to work together.

There is so many years left for hardware innovation. It will never end.

Apple will keep shriking the bezel for the rest of the decade. AR will be huge and will require more and more horsepower from the CPU.  In the next decade we will be seeing foldable screens on iPhones.

Don't believe the lies of Google and FAcebook that say hardware don't matter.

What's funny, is that diehard Android fans seem to think that software isn't important either! One notorious, anti-apple poster on several tech forums I frequent insists that fragmentation of Android is a myth, that there are no consequences whatsoever to most of the Android install base NOT being on the latest version of Android.

He says it's not an issue, just something made up by Apple fans, because Google has worked it, "by design", so that api's and innovations can all somehow be addressed through the store and Google Play services. He insists that an Android app on any Android phone running ___ version, four versions back, is just the same as running the app on a newer, better phone running latest Android version.

Sounds to me like a recipe for Lowest Common Denominator. Sounds like something Google HAD to deal with because OEMs and Carriers weren't helping the OS update situation. Sounds like Android users aren't expecting Google to come out with ANY significant updates to APIs or new APIs (like AR, for example).

So, if neither hardware nor software are important to Android users, I wonder what is important? Oh yeah, replacing the battery and SD cards, and "choice" (until that moment they make a choice for the one Android phone they end up with, that doesn't come with the latest version of Android and will never get an update ...but, apparently Apple "plans obsolescence", go figure!) ;P

ihatescreennames

ManyMacsAgo said:

sog35 said:

This makes me laugh.

I remember last year when Google/Facebook all were spewing that phone hardware isn't that important. Its the software.  LOL. Duh, a software company would say its software is most important. WRONG BITCH.

Hardware is equally as important as software. They both need to work together.

There is so many years left for hardware innovation. It will never end.

Apple will keep shriking the bezel for the rest of the decade. AR will be huge and will require more and more horsepower from the CPU.  In the next decade we will be seeing foldable screens on iPhones.

Don't believe the lies of Google and FAcebook that say hardware don't matter.

So, if neither hardware nor software are important to Android users, I wonder what is important?

The absence of an Apple logo.

I always wonder how these analysts get their inside information. Who does Kuo hear about immature algorithms and design and thermal issues from?  Granted, he isn't right a bunch of the time but sometimes he's fairly accurate.  It can't be as simple as just calling up the company one is wondering about and asking a few questions.

mubaili

only two years instead of 5 years? Apple is doomed.

tmay

sog35 said:

This makes me laugh.

I remember last year when Google/Facebook all were spewing that phone hardware isn't that important. Its the software.  LOL. Duh, a software company would say its software is most important. WRONG BITCH.

Hardware is equally as important as software. They both need to work together.

There is so many years left for hardware innovation. It will never end.

Apple will keep shriking the bezel for the rest of the decade. AR will be huge and will require more and more horsepower from the CPU.  In the next decade we will be seeing foldable screens on iPhones.

Don't believe the lies of Google and FAcebook that say hardware don't matter.

IMHO, their are only three relevant areas of hardware that Android OEM's exceed Apple today; screens, camera modules, and modems, and those, not by a great amount. One could throw in wireless charging as a fourth, I suppose. If you look at Apple's vertical stack of hardware technologies, and its supply chain, it would appear that Android OEM's are on the cusp of losing a bit more of that lead in camera modules and screens to the iPhone 8. Qualcomm will likely continue to hold modem performance leads for some time, though I'm not seeing this as much of a marketable advantage beyond this time next year.

Of course, there are plenty of arcane features that can be found on various Android OEM devices, and certainly features lacking on iPhones. So far, those features seem to have lead to little innovation in the marketplace, and certainly no likelihood of a disruption of Apple's roadmap.

I'd surmise from this that various OEM's will strike out on their own rather than wait for Qualcomm to deliver a more standardized feature list to compete with Apple, the result being considerably more differentiation between OEM's, and all that assumes. This cannot be beneficial for Qualcomm.

tzeshan

It looks like Apple is creating a new class of iPhone with iPhone 8.  This is the fourth class, the high end. SE, 7s, 7s Plus each is in a class by itself. 

mknelson

3D touch is a non-starter? I've talked to folks who absolutely love it and would never move to a device that didn't have it! Browsing Email in particular.

gregg thurman

ihatescreennames said: Granted, he isn't right a bunch of the time but sometimes he's fairly accurate.

Shotguns were developed to overcome the need for accuracy.  Kuo gets some things right BECAUSE he makes so many predictions (most of which are wrong) that he eventually gets something right.

Kuo supporters/fans ignore the number of predictions Kuo makes that are contrary to his earlier predictions, touting instead the predictions he gets right.

StrangeDays

AppleInsider said:

Further, Android device makers are taking a "wait and see" approach to 3D sensing, Kuo says. In particular, manufacturers are uncertain that Apple's upcoming "iPhone 8," which is expected to deliver a facial recognition system, can deliver an innovative user experience. Vendors are concerned that 3D sensing could be a nonstarter like Apple's 3D Touch, pressure sensitive input technology first deployed in the iPhone 6s.

Ok, three WTFs here:

1) How in the hell would Android manufacturers be in a position of certainty regarding Apple's final, implemented UX? They have absolutely no access to Apple's hardware or software for unreleased features.

2) Who said 3D-touch is a non-starter? It's being baked into nearly every app and people use it all the time.

3) How would the usefulness of whatever Apple's new Face ID is be remotely related to the popularity of firm-pressing via 3D Touch? Completely different use cases, completely difference tech.

gmgravytrain

To hear Qualcomm tell it, Apple is trailing them in 3D tech but then again, that's how Qualcomm is and why they're a bane to their clients. I'm curious to see if the A11 will run rings around the Snapdragon 835. I'm not sure if it means anything, though. Most flagship smartphones are already fast enough for 95% of the tasks they need to perform.

gregg thurman

tmay said: I'd surmise from this that various OEM's will strike out on their own rather than wait for Qualcomm to deliver a more standardized feature list to compete with Apple, the result being considerably more differentiation between OEM's, and all that assumes. This cannot be beneficial for Qualcomm.

With the sole exceptions being Huawei and Samsung, the Android market is being served by firms either making no profit, or, at best, making enough to keep the doors open another year.

As to Huawei and Samsung, only Samsung is generating enough cash flow to develop hardware technology necessary to follow Apple.  The key observation though is that Samsung FOLLOWS Apple direction, never leads it (except in the use of existing, and often times unwanted, off the shelf technologies.

gregg thurman

gmgravytrain said:

To hear Qualcomm tell it, Apple is trailing them in 3D tech but then again, that's how Qualcomm is and why they're a bane to their clients. I'm curious to see if the A11 will run rings around the Snapdragon 835. I'm not sure if it means anything, though. Most flagship smartphones are already fast enough for 95% of the tasks they need to perform.

"Most" means Android, not iOS.  The future of smartphones is in that last 5%.

EngDev

gmgravytrain said:

To hear Qualcomm tell it, Apple is trailing them in 3D tech but then again, that's how Qualcomm is and why they're a bane to their clients. I'm curious to see if the A11 will run rings around the Snapdragon 835. I'm not sure if it means anything, though. Most flagship smartphones are already fast enough for 95% of the tasks they need to perform.

They usually trade blows given they always launch ~6 months apart from each other.

You're right about the performance, most new SoCs are going to be able to perform well for the majority of tasks the average consumer throws at it.

I'm interested to see if Apple can achieve better sustained performance with the A11, perhaps the 10 nm process will allow that. The A10 would throttle considerably after ~10 minutes at load.

tmay

gregg thurman said:

tmay said: I'd surmise from this that various OEM's will strike out on their own rather than wait for Qualcomm to deliver a more standardized feature list to compete with Apple, the result being considerably more differentiation between OEM's, and all that assumes. This cannot be beneficial for Qualcomm.

With the sole exceptions being Huawei and Samsung, the Android market is being served by firms either making no profit, or, at best, making enough to keep the doors open another year.

As to Huawei and Samsung, only Samsung is generating enough cash flow to develop hardware technology necessary to follow Apple.  The key observation though is that Samsung FOLLOWS Apple direction, never leads it (except in the use of existing, and often times unwanted, off the shelf technologies.

This reminds me of the end of the Cold War, where the U.S. was assumed to have outspent the Soviet Union. Whether that is entirely true or not, I would agree with you that it will be extremely difficult for any Android OEM to pull ahead of Apple in hardware, or at the least, for any length of time. Google has some potential in AI that hasn't been fully exploited in hardware, though I would even have to wonder if that lead is even all that great today.

Still, I don't see Apple running away from the OEM's as much as just solidifying its position as the industry leader.

gmgravytrain

sog35 said:

I'm all in for Face ID

This phone will be AMAZING!!!

I still don't understand how they will do ApplePay with Face ID, but Apple will figure it out. they always do.

Apple stock to $170 this year baby!

To hear Andy Hargreaves say it, 3D FacialID is going to surely hinder iPhone sales due to consumer skepticism. It's like the headphone jack removal BS all over again. Some big worry sales would fall because of no standard headphone jack. It certainly didn't happen that way. Certain analysts are clearly stupid when it comes to understanding the ways of consumers. There are always the few loud complainers and then there is the majority of normal consumers who happily go along with whatever tech comes as long as it's easy to use. Most consumers aren't really hung up on anything badly enough to completely stop buying iPhones. There's a period of adjustment and then forget about what was in the past. That's over and done. Whenever I hear someone say "I'm never going to buy such and such a product because of (or lack of) X" I know they're full of crap. When the entire industry changes some tech there's no choice but to accept or become some whining technophobe outcast. Most consumers are not technophobes. They may be slow to adapt but eventually, they'll accept it because it's the simplest path to take.

 I don't know about Apple going to $170, although I hope you're right. The stock market is a crap shoot for Apple. Too many factions trying to mess with Apple's valuation. Apple is a solid company with all the basic fundamentals in place and yet the stock price fluctuation is still flakier than I think it should be with that P/E. The P/E still seems lower than peers and the S&P 500 for reasons I don't quite understand. With Microsoft being valued higher than Apple, there is something I'm completely missing in terms of market savvy. You compare all the standard fundamentals and I don't see Apple lacking in anything when compared to Microsoft. Maybe one thing, dividend yield. Apple falls short on that one thing.

maestro64

tmay said:

sog35 said:

This makes me laugh.

I remember last year when Google/Facebook all were spewing that phone hardware isn't that important. Its the software.  LOL. Duh, a software company would say its software is most important. WRONG BITCH.

Hardware is equally as important as software. They both need to work together.

There is so many years left for hardware innovation. It will never end.

Apple will keep shriking the bezel for the rest of the decade. AR will be huge and will require more and more horsepower from the CPU.  In the next decade we will be seeing foldable screens on iPhones.

Don't believe the lies of Google and FAcebook that say hardware don't matter.

IMHO, their are only three relevant areas of hardware that Android OEM's exceed Apple today; screens, camera modules, and modems, and those, not by a great amount. One could throw in wireless charging as a fourth, I suppose. If you look at Apple's vertical stack of hardware technologies, and its supply chain, it would appear that Android OEM's are on the cusp of losing a bit more of that lead in camera modules and screens to the iPhone 8. Qualcomm will likely continue to hold modem performance leads for some time, though I'm not seeing this as much of a marketable advantage beyond this time next year.

Of course, there are plenty of arcane features that can be found on various Android OEM devices, and certainly features lacking on iPhones. So far, those features seem to have lead to little innovation in the marketplace, and certainly no likelihood of a disruption of Apple's roadmap.

I'd surmise from this that various OEM's will strike out on their own rather than wait for Qualcomm to deliver a more standardized feature list to compete with Apple, the result being considerably more differentiation between OEM's, and all that assumes. This cannot be beneficial for Qualcomm.

Actually the most important Hardware piece is the SOC that Apple designs, makes, and writes the software. They do not have to compromise the software to make it work on generic processor nor do the make unnecessary trade-offs in hardware to make something work for the broader market. The tight integration that Apple has allow them to get performance no one else can achieve without making compromises elsewhere.

I have worked in High Tech a long time and I have been hearing for 30+ years that Hardware will not longer mater it the software which will make all the different. If that was the case when Did Apple choose to buy a processor company and make a SOC for them mobile product. Software people would like to think the hardware does not mater, in reality most software people can only write code, most all Hardware people I work with can design, and build hardware and write code so they understand the importance of all the pieces and one does not exist without the other and the closer the are integrated together the better the product.

Rayz2016

mknelson said:

3D touch is a non-starter? I've talked to folks who absolutely love it and would never move to a device that didn't have it! Browsing Email in particular.

If 3D Touch was such a non-starter then I wouldn't get so annoyed when I press hard on my iPad screen and nothing special  happens. 

avon b7

ManyMacsAgo said:

sog35 said:

This makes me laugh.

I remember last year when Google/Facebook all were spewing that phone hardware isn't that important. Its the software.  LOL. Duh, a software company would say its software is most important. WRONG BITCH.

Hardware is equally as important as software. They both need to work together.

There is so many years left for hardware innovation. It will never end.

Apple will keep shriking the bezel for the rest of the decade. AR will be huge and will require more and more horsepower from the CPU.  In the next decade we will be seeing foldable screens on iPhones.

Don't believe the lies of Google and FAcebook that say hardware don't matter.

What's funny, is that diehard Android fans seem to think that software isn't important either! One notorious, anti-apple poster on several tech forums I frequent insists that fragmentation of Android is a myth, that there are no consequences whatsoever to most of the Android install base NOT being on the latest version of Android.

He says it's not an issue, just something made up by Apple fans, because Google has worked it, "by design", so that api's and innovations can all somehow be addressed through the store and Google Play services. He insists that an Android app on any Android phone running ___ version, four versions back, is just the same as running the app on a newer, better phone running latest Android version.

Sounds to me like a recipe for Lowest Common Denominator. Sounds like something Google HAD to deal with because OEMs and Carriers weren't helping the OS update situation. Sounds like Android users aren't expecting Google to come out with ANY significant updates to APIs or new APIs (like AR, for example).

So, if neither hardware nor software are important to Android users, I wonder what is important? Oh yeah, replacing the battery and SD cards. ;P

Yesterday I tried to install a Pages upgrade on a MBP.

The Mac App Store told me it was available. I could hit the button to download it but then got smacked by the 'this application cannot run on this OS' (Yosemite). I was told that I would have to upgrade the entire OS (to El Capitan) if I wanted to install the latest Pages. 

Is Yosemite really that old? It hasn't reached three years yet.

Do I have no right to mention this just because the software is 'free'? That is very much open to debate.

The user doesn't actually want to update for varying reasons (all of which I understand) and will stay on Yosemite for a while longer and will therefore use the version of Pages currently installed on the machine. That is fragmentation.

iTunes. Bloatware defined. I remember trying to add an ebook to my iPad (which had plenty of space on it), only for iTunes to insist on lumbering through around seven individual steps (only one of which was even relevant) to copy a 200K file over.

It borked (as many users had found before me) and that mysterious place called 'other' was supposedly taking up all the capacity on the device. iTunes will stubbornly refuse to tell you what that chunk is actually comprised of. Incredible but true. It's just sat there sucking the usefulness out of the device and steadfastly leaving the user in the dark?

There are about 10,000 different tricks to try when trying to resolve these issues. They go from wiping the device and restoring from a backup (what? To transfer a tiny file?) through to simply upgrading to the latest versions of software. That last one was a catch 22 as upgrading the iOS version to the latest (at the time) would have killed compatibility with the OSX version I was running. Fragmentation again.

I also had my reasons for not upgrading the OSX I was using. Of course Apple made no attempt to marry the system configuration and warn me that upgrading iOS would break compatibility with the system the device was syncing to. It was happy to go ahead and install. Then the problem would be mine as the only way out of jail would be to upgrade the base OS (if that were even possible).

As a result I live in a fragmented Apple world because I don't jump when I'm told to jump. If things are working I leave them be because Apple has burnt my fingers over and over again. So much often changes in major OS updates (not even counting bugs, compatibility etc) that users are often reluctant to jump every single year in the name of 'progress'.

I'm sure I'm not alone.

Would it be correct to say that Microsoft supports Mac Office better than Apple supports Pages, Numbers etc.

Oh yeah, I forgot it's free. No complaints accepted. LOL.

First stop for AI at Apple should be something totally boring: support. Using it to eliminate​ the needless headaches involved in upgrades and compatibility.

The Mac App Store should not even be offering Pages upgrades if the system can't run the upgrade. It definitely shouldn't be offering me the option to physically download it and then baulk.

iTunes shouldn't be lumbering through unsolicited options to copy a 200K file and should let users peek inside that 'other' block.

iDevices shouldn't be offering to install upgrades that would leave the host iTunes unable to sync with them.

It is incredibly difficult to make AI handle these issues seamlessly in a natural language manner so that users can benefit from them and they are also 'boring' so it is unlikely Apple will use it to make things much better. Far better to show off AI with something sexy instead.