ericthehalfbee

gatorguy said:

ericthehalfbee said:

I’m losing track. What is that now, 5 fines/settlements? All in the 3/4 to 1 billion range?

China fined 'em around $900M (US), but then allowed them to go back to their general licensing practices, tho instead of charging royalties on 100% of a device's selling price they'll charge Chinese OEM's at 65% of it. China ends up validating and approving royalties based on selling price of the total device which seems an odd outcome.

Taiwan collected $90M (US) and is dropping the charges (does that mean they are considered innocent now, technically never found guilty?) as explained in the AI article. This one also ends up largely validating Qualcomm's licensing model too so yet another odd outcome. 

The Korean antitrust case against them is apparently under review with questions about Samsung influencing the outcome as part of a corruption scandal involving Korean government officials so hard to say how that one plays out. Big surprise huh?

The EU Commission also wants $1.2B US and considering it's the EU I suspect an appeal will be for naught. (Does anyone win EU Commission appeals?). That one was a bit different tho as the EU's complaint involved Qualcomm paying rebates to Apple to lock them in as a customer and thus "stifle competition". the general licensing model is allowed to continue. Yet more oddity.

I'm not aware of any other current antitrust rulings and fines but there might be. There's still investigations under way in various venues according to media articles so no doubt more to come.

Blackberry got $815 million through arbitration over patent license royalties (the exact details are unknown, but it sure sounds similar to other cases). This case is final and can't be appealed.

Gilliam_Bates said:

Fatman said:

Chinese govt. — they have a vested interest in Apple failing since they ‘own’ many of the competing phone companies and would love to see their own be the next trillion $ company. They make trademarks, patents, litigation, regulation so restrictive. Plus they have access to all communication in and out of country. Timing is critical since upcoming models are in full production.

Agree, but money is only one reason for the Chinese to have a large worldwide phone brand. The other is control.

Huawei- and ZTE phones were recently marked as huge security risks by FBI, CIA, and NSA. China is now price dumping Huawei phones and spreading them all over the world. (Just passed Apple in sold number of phones globally.)

You don’t need to be a conspiracy theorist to see what this is all about. Imagine the consequences if they would successfully infiltrate a chip factory and implant secret functionality directly in the hardware. Such hacks could be extremely difficult to spot.

I don't think you understand how a chip is made. It would be absolutely 100% IMPOSSIBLE for this to be done through a virus or through "hacked" software.

The ONLY way you could modify something like an Apple processor (to install additional functionality) would be if a LARGE NUMBER of engineers on the Apple processor design team were directly modifying the chip design to insert such functionality. And also hope that for some strange reason the other engineers just never noticed there were extra blocks in the chip that they didn't know about.

In other words, it's virtually impossible. 

avon b7 said:

Soli said:

Is Android even idealized for tablet use yet?

It's been a while since I used an Android tablet (Samsung, Woxter) but the experience wasn't as good as with my Mini 2.

No idea if things have improved.

They've gotten worse. No OEMs putting any effort into tablets, Google not taking Android on tablets seriously and developers too lazy to optimize for tablets, instead relying on Android scaling to make phone Apps work on larger screens.

avon b7 said:

About 30 years ago Sanyo had a portable cassette player that had an excellent mic to incorporate ambient speech into the music you were listening to.

The music would continue playing but at a distinct volume and the speaker's voice came through crystal clear. You had to manually flick a switch of course.

To a degree, this patent is the hi-tech digital version of the same idea.

So you’re comparing a simple analog summing amplifier (one of the most basic electronic circuits that have been used for 100+ years) to an advanced digital processing system?

Not the same. At all.

avon b7 said:

ericthehalfbee said:

avon b7 said:

nunzy said:

This is why the devs always come out with the iOS version of an app before they come out with the Android version, and lots of them never even bother to make an Android version.

And the iOS version is always much better quality than the Android version.

Android cannot survive much longer. They tried to kill the iPhone, but they failed.

You need to dig a little deeper. The article deliberately played down the bigger issue and as a result only used the word Android once.

That should have put you on alert.

However, you jumped in and used it four times in three very short paragraphs!

This piece isn't really about Android. It is about the Google Play store. When it says the Google Play Store isn't available in China but the App Store is, didn't it occur to you that removing China from any smartphone tally would seriously distort the numbers?

The linked article only compares Google's and Apple's stores. It doesn't compare Android with iOS in any meaningful way.

In 2016, non-Play Store Android app revenue was sitting at 10 billion dollars. In 2017 it was expected to double and combined Android app at revenues were expected to surpass Apple App Store revenue:

https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/29/app-annie-android-to-top-ios-in-app-store-revenue-this-year/

Now, I don't know the figures for the first half of 2018 for combined Android app store revenue nor the Apple figures without the China numbers but if you want a meaningful platform comparison, the numbers really should take Apple's China revenues off the total or add non-Play Store Android app revenue onto the total.

More bullshit from you-know-know. It’s funny how hypocritical you Android fans are.

Third party Android stores are rife with malware and other security issues. The Android fans answer to this is “Google Play is safe and if you get something by downloading a third party App you only have yourself to blame. Stick to Google Play.”

Yet when they want to compare revenues (to desperately try to come up with a “win” against iOS), suddenly third party stores are included (ALL of Android).

The article isn't about malware or Android.

It's about Google Play Store revenues.

I was replying to someone who was equating Google Play with Android.

There was nothing untoward to be smelled, much less, bullshit.

Nothing hypocritical either and the idea of getting a 'win' is absurd. That makes little sense.

Sorry, but do you think you're fooling anyone? You always show up trying to put your spin on things (with a slant against Apple/iOS and in favor of Google/Android).

BTW, the person you replied to didn't say anything about revenues, third party stores or how much is made in China. They talked about developers preferring iOS or that iOS Apps are generally superior. Both of these statements are true, yet you never addressed either of those in your post, and went all-in on third party revenues. The only thing incorrect in their post was that "Android cannot survive", which is clearly false.

Third party Android stores should never be counted for numerous reasons:

1. They are typically self-contained stores serving a particular market.
2. Many of them are "closed", in that they only serve up their own Apps (more common with carriers).
3. Developers rarely place their Apps on multiple third party stores (and wouldn't even have access to the closed stores). If someone wants to target a wider audience and multiple countries, they'd use Google Play.
4. Because of these, third party Android stores do nothing to help the overall Android ecosystem. The only true Android ecosystem is Google Play, just like The App Store is the only iOS ecosystem.

The only valid comparison to make is between Google Play and The App Store. And The App Store is trouncing Google Play.