applemagic

gatorguy said:

radarthekat said:

acejax805 said:

It sounds like Mr. Mollenkopf doesn't know his a$$ from a whole in the ground. Qualcomm has been in the business of gaining exclusivity through rebates. It has been documented several times by different Android manufacturers throughout the years. When I heard Huawei was being interviewed as part of the FTC's investigation, I knew Qualcomm would be in hot water. Huawei has done a great job documenting how Qualcomm attempted to gain exclusivity through these rebates (they called them financial bribes). 

Huawei and Lenovo are both on record stating Qualcomm has in the past threatened retaliation against them if they attempted to challenge Qualcomm's legal terms by either delaying, or cutting off supply of chips.

Qulcomm's refusal to license their patents is another dangerous game they are playing since most consider their patent holdings to be standard-essential patents. This is a clear violation of FRAND. 

It takes a company like Apple to stand up to a company like Qualcomm and personally I am glad to see it happen. I'm sure many of the other OEM's who cannot sustain a fight against Qualcomm (or are unwilling to) are glad to see it as well, which can be confirmed by the support Apple is receiving by many of it's competitors (Samsung, Huawei, Lenovo, ZTE, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Intel, Sprint).

You make the point well; that if the same rebates for exclusivity have been cut with multiple smartphone vendors, it’s more likely that it’s Qualcomm pushing this arrangement than it would be that each smartphone vendor happened to decide on its own to demand a large rebate, out of the blue, thus prompting Qualcomm to think up the idea of requiring exclusivity as a reaction to the rebate demand.  Common sense.  

FWIW Mr Mueller whose opinion and articles have been mentioned a few times in this thread already believes it was likely Apple who offered to deal exclusively with Qualcomm in return for a lower royalty. He thinks  Apple is being disingenuous by saying they've always wanted to have multiple suppliers and leaving the impression it was Qualcomm saying that wasn't going  to happen. 

Very strange summary of Mueller's opinions. I didn't see him stating anywhere that he thinks Apple is being disingenuous about having multiple suppliers. If I have missed that, I will be happy to stand corrected.

You also left out his subsequent and final summary:

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I doubt that this question of who, under what circumstances, took the initiative to offer exclusivity has any weight. If this were a criminal price-fixing case, then the one who came up with the scheme might be sentenced to a couple more years than the other guy, but the latter would still go to jail, too. In price-fixing, they'd both have an anticompetitive benefit because they'd gang up on customers (the same group of customers, in fact). In the Qualcomm-Apple case, the benefit to Apple was a deal that an Apple witness basically described as "less bad" than the original deal, but still not fair in Apple's view, while Qualcomm had the benefit of raising the entrance barrier to its (Qualcomm's) competitors--with a customer the FTC argues (and Intel confirmed) is strategically extremely important for a component supplier to gain market share, build a reputation, and generate volume. By contrast, Apple didn't foreclose any market to its own competitors. And it certainly didn't leverage this deal to undercut anybody.
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Hmm...I am not sure why AI is presenting this (the incentive payment) as some kind of a bribe that Apple offered Qualcomm. Going by Florian Mueller's article on fosspatents.com, it appears to be the other way around!

That is, Qualcomm had a habit of negotiating incentive payments (by offering rebates) with device makers in return for strategic favours. So, there's really no wrinkle in the FTC case, as suggested by AI. On the contrary, it aligns with the testimony of Apple supply chain executive Tony Blevins who said the rebate offered by Qualcomm made it very unattractive (read, financially unviable) for Apple to pursue a secondary chip supplier.

In fact, the issue of such 'incentive payments' is one of four issues related to Qualcomm's conduct that are being investigated in the FTC trial. To quote:

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For the FTC, Jennifer Milici outlined the four key issues surrounding Qualcomm's conduct that the FTC is tackling (let's not forget that some other aspects are at issue in Apple v. Qualcomm in San Diego, where a trial will start on April 15), which are interrelated as she also explained:

• the "no license-no chips" policy;
• incentive payments (for a brief explanation, those incentives effectively reduce patent licensing fees in exchange for doing Qualcomm some strategically-relevant favors);
• the refusal to license rival chipset makers (note that Judge Koh's summary judgment in this context was based on contractual obligations, while the focus at this trial is now on an antitrust duty to deal); and
• past exclusive arrangements with Apple.

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http://www.fosspatents.com/2019/01/in-its-courtroom-chess-match-with.html

xbit said:

corrections said:

Apple Music is just doing a better job at reaching and serving demand. That's it.

Or, more likely, Apple Music’s subscription base has a higher percentage of North American listeners. North American listeners are more likely to want to listen to North American artists such as Drake.

You seem to have missed this part of the article:

Apple stated that Scorpion achieved both U.S. and global streaming records on Apple Music...

So, it was not just in North America.

elijahg said:

nunzy said:

It looks like they learned a valuable lesson. If you mess with Apple, you get hammered.

The one that's going to get hammered is Apple, if they continue with this anticompetitive behaviour. The new rule that "transactions taking place within mirrored software do not need to use in-app purchase, provided the transactions are processed on the host device." is probably a way to skirt this.

The part I don't get about people calling Apple's actions as anti-competitive is this - Steam clearly tried to use the iOS app as the doorway to sneak in a method for their users to then purchase their games on external store fronts. So, Steam gets to use the iOS ecosystem, where users are known to be more willing to spend and spend heavily, to then bypass that system and deny Apple their cut of the in-app purchases. If this isn't a shady business practice, I am not sure what is.

I think this article does a disservice to AI readers by presenting one man's opinion as the gospel, more or less, while brushing away a lot of recent studies as not belonging to the category of 'science' this particular author will accept as valid. And, this bias reflects right in the title.

Indeed, the entire article isn't a genuine attempt at exploration or questioning of a very complex topic, but a declaration of a position the author has taken, because of what constitutes 'bad' science, in his personal opinion. That, right there, is a disservice to AI readers.

The article starts by referring to the usual red herring in all the arguments about cell phone radiation:

First and foremost, RF radiation is not the same as ionizing radiation generated by decay of radioactive isotopes, and from the sun itself. This isn't Radiation Physics 101 in 1000 words, so in short, RF lacks the energy that ionizing radiation has to break chemical bonds, ionize atoms, and damage DNA.

However, many recent studies have dwelt on the non-thermal health effects of long term exposure to non-ionizing radiation. Dr. Martin L. Pall of Washington State University has done important research (probably pioneering?) research on the exact biological mechanism through which non-ionizing radiation may be causing lasting damage to human health. To summarize, the non-thermal effects of radiation from electrical devices are real and probably work by causing mitochondrial damage. 

To summarily dismiss such studies or imply they are non-science or bad science, as the author does in multiple comments doesn't seem to me to reflect the so-called 'scientific method' the author supposedly follows. 

More recently, two long term studies have shown an increase in specific types of tumour, with the authors concluding that they are most likely caused by cell phone radiation. The first of these is in the U.K and involves a study of humans; the second is in the U.S and involves a study of the effects of cell phone radiation on rats and mice under the National Toxicology Program.

Needless to say, vested interests deny the validity of both these studies. The NTP study's results were almost whitewashed by the FDA and the American Cancer Society, but a scientific review panel revised their stand when they found that male rats exposed to cell phone radiation developed a form of heart tissue tumour that's extremely rare in rats - the kicker that made the panel change their stand is that this rare form of heart tissue tumour has also been found in people using cell phone at high power settings:

National Toxicology Program senior scientist John Bucher said the heart tissue cancer that developed in male rats is the same type of cancer that has been seen in some people who have used cellphones at the highest power settings for years.

"The fact that this tumor type was the same really drew our eye to it," Bucher said. "And also they were some of the strongest findings from a numerical standpoint."

Finally, on the subject of the 2011 IARC/WHO study, to which the author alludes in one of his comments, not many know that the Ramazzini Institute, which is highly respected for the quality of its medical research, is urging the IARC to revise its categorization of cell phone usage from possibly carcinogenic to probably carcinogenic.

So, my point is that, like many others have pointed out, this is far from a subject on which the final word has been said. For the author to suggest otherwise and to declare the matter as 'settled science' is, to put it mildly, irresponsible and a gross disservice to AI readers.