cloudguy

It is amazing to see so many people bash Qualcomm for not agreeing to Apple's demands, even though doing so would have cost Qualcomm billions of dollars.

1. Apple and Qualcomm had an existing legal agreement in place that Apple entered into on their own volition that Apple broke.
2. Qualcomm has 100% valid patents in this area and are a practicing entity.
3. Qualcomm's billing philosophy for Apple was consistent with their billing philosophy for everybody else.

Apple just up and said "we are going to stop paying for you what we agreed to pay you because":

1. We are Apple making patent and contract law only binding on everyone else. Everyone else heeding contracts with us and respecting our IP is mandatory. For us it is voluntary.
2. Qualcomm's patents while valid - are only valuable because they are in iPhones in the first place. So Qualcomm should really be paying us!
3. Because we are Apple, we should be able to dictate our own billing philosophy based on our needs. If Qualcomm's many other customers who buy far more components and operate on much lower margins all do what Apple did - break valid contracts in the middle of them and demand new terms that are as self serving as possible - costing Qualcomm 1/3 of its revenue, that is Qualcomm's problem!

Total garbage. The reality: Apple had no problem paying the previously agreed to rate when they were still experiencing massive yearly sales increases. But after "peak iPhone" and "peak iPad" passed, Apple decided that they were going to maintain a similar amount of profit by squeezing suppliers. While that works with smaller suppliers, it isn't going to work with big suppliers with the resources to fight - and win - multiyear lawsuits filed in multiple countries. (For example, Apple didn't even contest the penalty they had to pay Samsung for not buying as many OLED screens as they committed to.) Unlike Apple's (mostly) tilting at windmills against Samsung over an issue that they had already decisively lost in Apple vs Microsoft 20 years prior, Qualcomm filed lawsuits against Apple in every regulatory and legal market in the world and was going to win in nearly all of them. Those courts and agencies were on the verge of awarding Qualcomm:

1. previously owed licensing fees
2. punitive damages
3. bans on sale on Apple devices until they addressed 1. - 3. (The things that Apple tried to win against Samsung, but only got a few hundred million - the equivalent of maybe $5 for every device that Samsung sold - over trade dress.)

Granted while all bodies were not going to do 3. they were all going to do 1. and 2. Apple had no choice but to "settle" - meaning give Qualcomm everything they were owed and sign a long term exclusive deal with them which was much better than before - because Qualcomm's patents are obvious and airtight plus Qualcomm's tech is the best in the industry and no else else can compete. Intel wasn't the only one competing with Qualcomm making LTE and 5G radios. Samsung and MediaTek make them too. There is actually a Wintel 5G laptop that has a MediaTek 5G radio installed near the speaker. 

While Qualcomm made a ton of money off Apple, being a mobile chip supplier is only a small part of their business, and discrete 5G radios only a small part of their mobile component business. Going forward their focus is going to be competing with Intel, AMD and Nvidia on edge computing devices. Apple cut them a check to sever their business relationship. As part of the deal, Qualcomm is going to actually help Apple design a 5G radio that is comparable in quality with theirs. (Apple isn't exactly screaming this from the rooftops but it is true.) After this agreement is over, Qualcomm will be thrilled at not having to do business with Apple anymore. You make so much money off Apple that you can't turn them down - your shareholders would freak out - but dealing with Apple's gamesmanship is so frustrating that you wonder whether it is worth the money you are making in the first place, especially if you are already a massive company who doesn't need it. 

yojimbo007 said:

Ahhh how i wish Apple had pulled the trigger and bought Disney few years back,.. 

Except that Disney was never for sale. Neither was Nintendo. Sure there was a time when Disney was troubled but ever since the Eisner era in the late 80s when they started making hit movies again like Who Framed Roger Rabbit and The Little Mermaid, then in the 90s when they bought ABC and ESPN and had even bigger hits like Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and the Lion King Disney has been fine (an understatement). And after the Eisner era ran its course, they got even bigger with Pixar, Pirates of the Caribbean and the Disney Princesses merchandising empire. Next was going stratospheric after buying Marvel, Star Wars, Fox and launching Disney+.

Also, even when Disney troubled in the mid to late 80s, whether Apple would have had the money to buy it is debatable. Sure stuff like "The Black Cauldron" and "The Brave Little Toaster" had then bleeding red ink all over the place, but Disney still had their studio lots, a very valuable film library, a cable network, theme parks and the merchandising empire. Even if Apple had mortgaged themselves to the hilt to buy those assets, what would Apple have done with them anyway? Disney is what they are today because of a string of outstanding people - Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg, John Lasseter, Bob Iger, Bob Chapek etc. - made excellent creative and business decisions. Without that, Disney would be MGM/UA (went bankrupt and now only exists on paper), Columbia (owned by Sony), Warner Bros (owned by AT&T), Paramount (owned by Viacom) or Universal (owned by Comcast). All of whom were much bigger entertainment companies than Disney was in the 1980s.

crowley said:

Rayz2016 said:

crowley said:

Given how many apps use advertising as a revenue model, do these numbers really mean all that much?  

Yes, they mean a lot. Because without revenue, the app store can't operate.

Sure it can. Both Apple and Google are more than capable of running app stores at a loss. Apple because they get revenue from hardware sales and Google because they get revenue from advertising sales. That's why I'm saying that the app store revenue alone is an incomplete and not particularly useful metric.

I am going to agree with @crowley here. Let us do a comparison of the 4 biggest app stores in the US (in reverse order). Granted APKMirror, F-Droid etc. probably actually distribute far more apps than a couple on this list but they do so for free. These are the 4 biggest paid app stores.

0. Samsung: makes a lot of money on hardware but next to nothing on apps. Their app store is the worst, so bad that the #1 Samsung fan site - yes they do exist - trashes it.
1. Amazon: makes a ton of money on services but not so much on apps. Their app store is horrible.
2. Google: makes a ton of money on services but a good amount of apps. Their app store is "fine."
2a. Google: makes a ton of money on services but lost money for years on the ChromeOS app store. That app store was filled with nothing but adware and spyware that Google is slowly shutting down in favor of migrating PWAs to the Google Play Store and trying to figure out something to do with extensions.
3. Apple: makes a ton on hardware and services and more on apps than 0-2 combined. The best app store in the business and the model for the industry even though they weren't the first app store.

So yes, if quality, privacy, security etc. mean something to you then these numbers absolutely do mean a lot and this are a very useful metric. Also, mobile app developers strongly prefer $4.99 or $9.99 up front to ongoing revenue from subscriptions or ads. That is why so many mobile app developers are "iOS only" or "iOS first to cover development costs and establish our reputation then Android port to turn a profit." Meanwhile very few mobile developers are "Android only" - beyond creating apps specific to the platform that are useless or won't even run on iOS - with nearly none being "Android first." And among the paid Android app stores, practically the only ones that are in the Amazon and Samsung stores but not Google Play - because if you can develop the app for Amazon or Samsung there is nothing precluding you from submitting it to both or all three - are the ones that are so bad that even Google rejects them. 

mainyehc said:

Nah. I think Mac Minis will fly off the shelves *anyway*, and Microsoft will still cave in and offer a full, non-OEM, expensive, VM-compatible ARM64 Windows license, to stem the tide and maintain relevance. If they can get away with a higher profit margin on one of those selling it to many developers who would still have to buy a Mac anyway, they will, OEMs be damned.

Even though the iPhone wasn’t even out and the mobile and desktop market share figures weren’t, just like you pointed out, the comparable in 2006-2007 to what they are today, the same argument you made could’ve been construed back then (as a matter of fact, it was). That didn’t stop Microsoft back then, and it won’t stop them now, either. Especially *this* Microsoft, which, even with their decent devices division, is pivoting more and more towards services.

Take off your Apple blinders for a second. See the points below.

1. Even if Apple's market share triples, the Windows market share will still be 70%. So "maintain relevance" ... get real!!!

2. Large companies - think Microsoft, Google, Samsung, Qualcomm etc. don't "cave" to Apple the way that suppliers who need Apple's business to survive do. If they did, Apple's thermonuclear war against Android would have worked. Even if Google hadn't dropped it in response to Apple kicking their CEOs off their board, Samsung/LG/Qualcomm would have refused to participate in manufacturing Android devices in order to remain preferred Apple suppliers. What actually happened: Google, Samsung, Qualcomm and the rest continued with Android and Apple is still forced to pay billions for components (from Qualcomm, Samsung and LG) and services (cloud products from Google) anyway!

3. That didn't stop Microsoft from what back then? Microsoft never provided Windows to be used on Macs in the first place. Instead, people would obtain "upgrade" copies of Windows and using those for bootcamp, VMWare etc. Microsoft wasn't happy about this but had no way to stop it. Anyone who purchases Windows - either via buying a Windows device or copy of the OS - is guaranteed the ability to upgrade to the next version. To fulfill this, Microsoft has to make Windows generally available and there is no way to determine whether any particular copy was used to upgrade a previous Windows install or not. 

4. What about now? Well with Linux, you don't "need" to do a old style upgrade ... you can configure it to perform rolling upgrades using sudo apt dist-upgrade (for Debian distros, other distros have similar). Google exploited this: as ChromeOS is a Debian-based, Google only distributes the OS to OEMs and then provides rolling updates. (As ChromeOS is not a free OS like Android it was done to prevent piracy which would have been a real problem otherwise.)

5. When Nadella took over Microsoft, he emulated what Google did with ChromeOS. As such, Windows 10 is the last version of Windows. No more upgrades, only rolling updates. The only reason why you can still download a Windows ISO and license is because Microsoft is still obligated to facilitate upgrades from Windows 7 and 8. After those versions reach final EOL in January 2023, that obligation will cease. At that point, Windows will no longer be available to end users. It will only be available to OEMs.

6. What about ARM Windows 10? Well the upgrade guarantee only covers the same architecture. So you aren't guaranteed the ability to upgrade from x86 Windows 7 to ARM Windows 10: only from x86 Windows 7 to x86 Windows 10. What about previous ARM Windows versions? The only ones were Windows Mobile and Windows RT. There was never a guarantee to upgrade from Windows Mobile to Windows PC, just as there isn't from Windows PC to Windows Server. And Windows RT was EOLed before Windows 10 on ARM came out, precisely to prevent attempts to upgrade to it. (The five Windows RT users weren't happy.)

7. Bottom line: ARM Windows will never be made available to anyone but OEMs. And after 2020, x86 Windows won't be available to anyone but OEMs either.

"The facility should begin mass production of the components in the first quarter of 2021, timed with the release of Intel's Ice Lake server chips."

That chip was supposed to launch like 6 months ago: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intels-xeon-scalable-ice-lake-sp-volume-ramp-delayed-to-q1-2021

Ice Lake is the 10nm process. Server chips - especially for Google - would undoubtedly mean 56 core Xeons. Intel always takes care of their enterprise - meaning server, industrial, IoT - customers first before releasing laptop and desktop chips. However, there may still be Intel Core i9 (10 cores) and Intel Core i7 (8 cores) as well as 10-26 core Intel Xeon chips suitable for the last run of Mac Pros as well as top end MacBook Pros and iMacs available by the end of 2021. Whether that leaves Apple enough time for a refresh in 2021 - or even if they will be interested in doing so - is debatable. 

But their releasing 10nm "desktop" chips - as opposed to their (not really) "mobile" chips that max out at 4 cores - no earlier than 3Q 2021 means that even the "mobile" 7nm chips suitable for MacBook Air (formerly), Chromebook and Windows 10 2-in-1s won't be coming before 2022, even if Intel decides to pay TSMC to make their chips (a decision that won't be made until 1Q 2021). 

However, the power/performance gains that Ice Lake will provide - along with new Nvidia, AMD and Intel Iris XE discrete graphics cards - will be enough to keep the Windows and ChromeOS crowd happy for now. Similar to how Android fans have been happy with Qualcomm Snapdragon 8xx performance (Samsung Exynos not so much).