Qualcomm Is Seeking US Import Ban For iPhones (bloomberg.com) 104
Qualcomm is seeking to block the sale of iPhones in the U.S. after Apple decided to stop paying them billions of dollars in licensing fees for smartphone chips. Bloomberg reports: Qualcomm is preparing to ask the International Trade Commission to stop the iPhone, which is built in Asia, from entering the country, threatening to block Apple's iconic product from the American market in advance of its anticipated new model this fall, according to the person, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private. The ITC is a quasi-judicial agency in Washington that has the power to block the import of goods into the U.S. and processes cases more quickly than federal district courts -- the venue in which the companies are accusing each other of lying, making threats and trying to create an illegal monopoly. The escalating legal dispute revolves around patents Qualcomm holds that let it to charge a percentage of the price of every modern high-speed data-capable smartphone, regardless of whether the devices use its chips. Apple argues the system is unfair and Qualcomm has used licensing leverage to illegally help its semiconductor unit.
Re:New boss same as old boss? (Score:5, Funny)
That depends on the last person he talks to.
Good Defense (Score:1)
So, to defend itself against being called a monopoly, it's acting like a monopoly.
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These particular patents were included in the industry standard on the condition that Qualcomm would provide them under FRAND terms [wikipedia.org]. As such, Qualcomm has given up their right to leverage those patents as fully as their monopoly position would otherwise allow. The OP seems to be suggesting that by engaging in the sorts of practices mentioned in the summary, they're acting the part of an unrestricted monopoly, even though they gave up the right to do so when they agreed to FRAND terms. The fact that the US g
Apple is the one demanding special treatment.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Ahh, the shill is strong in this one. ....
Qualcomm is licensing this very same technology across the board to a wide range of end users at the same rates.
The problem is, Apple demand they should get a BETTER rate than everyone else, and there reasoning seems to be basically that most other smaller providers bend over and take it from Apple on pricing, so its only FAIR Qualcomm do also.
Care to explain how that fits in to FRAND? what part of FRAND states that Apple get BETTER pricing than the rest of an industry?
Thought not.
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Ahh, the shill is strong in this one. ....
Not so. You jumped (for entirely understandable reasons) to a wrong conclusion.
Let's walk through what I actually said. I was answering the AC's question by providing a conjecture:
1) I think the OP's point is that it's illegal for Qualcomm to act as they are.
And three facts that were relevant to that conjecture:
1) Qualcomm agreed to FRAND terms
2) Doing so meant giving up some of their rights
3) The US government is suing them for violating the terms
While I can understand how you assumed I was shilling for Ap
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"Care to explain how that fits in to FRAND? what part of FRAND states that Apple get BETTER pricing than the rest of an industry?"
Apple has made no such claim that the should receive special licensing terms just for being Apple. The "non-discriminatory" clause does not prohibit dependencies on volume, just that any licensee should be eligible for the same volume licensing terms.
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Agreed. I never suggested otherwise. Honestly, I don't know enough about the specifics of this case to have formed any sort of opinion over whether or not Qualcomm is violating FRAND terms. Apple says they are, but Apple says a lot of things...
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I've always thought that tech FRAND agreements are anything but. This is mostly because they are worded to be some kind of percentage of product price or something otherwise odd like that.
FRAND should be this and only this: Licenses are $X per unit on volumes up to A, $X-b up to B, etc. That is - a test for FRAND should be if the price is a fixed nominal value (perhaps with volume scaling), not a fixed percentage.
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I hear Apple has some cash. Can't they just buy Qualcomm out? Maybe they could buy their debts and demand immediate payment, you know, kinda like what the banks did with those home mortgages.
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You're right! The banks sold the mortgages with full knowledge they were junk. So, if it makes you feel better, replace 'banks' with 'hedge funds' in the first post.
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I'm not sure how your mortgage is structured, but mine definitely is a fixed-term note that cannot be "called in" or otherwise demanded immediately.
In fact, there's literally not anything that either side can do to modify the exact terms of what is due when, except for my right to accelerate the payments to the bank.
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my right to accelerate the payments to the bank.
Be [tampabay.com] very careful [wftv.com] with that. You may have the right, but it's an expensive one.
If Apple were to buy Qualcomm's debts, they might be able to do what they want with it.
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You failed to post the link to where the Orlando man not only had the foreclosure cancelled, he would up with a new mortgage and a lower mortgage payment.
Neither story fully explains what exactly his original loan terms were and what the "trial adjustment" was for. I've had two loans for 10 years with Wells Fargo and the forms literally let you specify how much additional principal you want to pay every month, so I call BS on the conspiracy against pre-payment. So many people want to do it they made a for
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When you pay off a loan early the bank loses interest. They don't like that.
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When you pay off a loan early the bank loses interest.
No they don't. They have your cash in hand and can gain interest on it directly, rather than waiting for you to pay it. In fact, if you financed your mortgage at a rate below the current rate, they stand to gain by having you pay early, since the interest they'll get on the cash is higher than the interest they'll get from your payments.
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Then where is the incentive to offer the loan in the first place?
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At the time the mortgage was set up, it was worth it to them as an investment vehicle that provided (generally) stable returns for the amount of risk involved. Simple as that. Having an investment that will provide an annual return of X%, potentially for the next few decades, is valuable. If the investment comes to an abrupt end (i.e. the homeowner pays off the loan), the bank doesn't lose the value they already got out of it, and the only way they would lose the future value out of it is if they did nothin
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What percentage of all mortgages are paid until maturity?
I would wager that almost none of them are, especially anymore. People move to a new city or new house in the same city, get divorced, die, go broke, whatever. There's a thousand and one reasons that mortgages are not paid for 30 years until maturity.
The lack of certainty over any one mortgage as a reliable producer of fixed income is already built into the interest rate as a risk as well as the larger business model. If mortgage lending was depend
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Yes, you're technically correct, but practically speaking, there's nothing stopping them from taking the money you just paid and loaning it to the next guy in line, restoring things to where they had been already. That was my point.
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The bank is more able to loan money. The bank is required to keep a certain proportion of its issued loans as actual assets. Suppose the bank has lent up to its limit, and I pay off my mortgage. The bank can then lend the previous value of my mortgage without acquiring more assets.
Re: Look at it this way (Score:1)
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Sure, I'm quite aware of compound interest, but I'm not at all clear on why you're bringing it up. Interest in mortgages is calculated on a monthly basis and doesn't compound on itself. It's simply calculated as:
principal * interest / 12
Let's use this amortization schedule [gravecosoftware.com] as an example. This guy apparently took out a loan for $210,000 at 8.25% and is paying $1577.66 each month. Of that $1577.66, you'll see in the first month that $1443.75 is going to the bank as an interest payment, whereas only $133.91 i
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When you pay off a loan early the bank loses interest.
No they don't. They have your cash in hand and can gain interest on it directly, rather than waiting for you to pay it. In fact, if you financed your mortgage at a rate below the current rate, they stand to gain by having you pay early, since the interest they'll get on the cash is higher than the interest they'll get from your payments.
Sure. but why would you pay back your mortgage when you could invest your money with higher interest than you pay on your mortgage?
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For a lot of people, the emotional benefit of being debt-free outweighs the financial benefit of investing that money elsewhere.
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I prepay principal with my mortgage, but the bank is still making a vast profit on my loan in spite of it. Despite making an extra principal payment per year, it only cuts the loan term to 23 years from 30. Most interest is paid on the front end of the mortgage, years 24-30 would be a fraction of the interest paid on years 1-23.
I'm also pretty sure that the vast majority of mortgages are held less than 30 years (people move, sell houses, etc) so banks *expect* that the mortgages will be paid off years
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However, I've never signed a mortgage agreement that said I couldn't pay principal back early. At one point, I sold a house, and paid the mortgage off with the proceeds. I can also pay more principal early to shorten the loan.
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Was it really an accident though? *wink, wink*
Deja Vu (Score:2)
Are we stuck in a time loop? I feel we've done this before.
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Oh come on, I'm a Bureaucrat in AK! The Port of Anchorage is... A crappy mess, but Downtown where the actual offices are is nice!
Let's do the numbers... (Score:4, Insightful)
Qualcomm market capitalization = $80 billion, give or take a few. Apple cash on hand = $250 billion.
I know how this turns out. Don Quixote had a more rational approach.
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The anti-trust implications
In a sane country or in a sane time period, perhaps. Both Hitlary's and Drumpf's parties have their positions on that "anti-trust" thingy firmly set: pay your share of bribes^Wcampaign donations, and no anti-trust law can apply to you.
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Do you mean for example Ireland? They keep bending over and ignoring their own and EU law to do as Apple wishes, I don't see them to raise the anti-trust issue.
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Re:Let's do the numbers... (Score:4, Insightful)
Is all dispute resolution in the US a simple case of who has the most money, or is there some kind of legal system of rules in place?
I mean, most countries have the latter, and the point of the system is to prevent stuff like this.
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Holy crap. I thought my point was pretty obvious, but apparently not. This is a *business dispute*, so solving with business methods - i.e. raiding the One Infinite Loop coffee fund to buy out qualcomm in its entirety - is a pretty reasonable solution, it would seem.
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This thread is petering out but it's not $80 million to buy out a lawsuit. They will stop the suit, but still have all the assets of Qualcomm to either continue to operate or sell off in whole or in parts. I haven't bothered to look, but if Qualcomm is profitable, then continuing to run it will just add to the Apple corporate coffers.
Are all non-Americans morons? (Score:2)
You formed your opinion of the American legal system based on the douchey comment of one /. poster who claimed that Apple would win because they have more money (despite tons of counterexamples). That's clearly moronic.
Am I justified in assuming that all non-Americans are morons?
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Your sarcasm detector is broken.
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Qualcomm market capitalization = $80 billion, give or take a few. Apple cash on hand = $250 billion.
I know how this turns out. Don Quixote had a more rational approach.
So do I. It turns out the acquisition will be blocked by the courts.
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This could be used against Apple though
I'd be real skeptical that they're being treated unfairly when they have billions upon billions of dollars in the bank. If it's that unfair how are they able to operate one of the most successful businesses in the history of the Earth?
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"Qualcomm market capitalization = $80 billion, give or take a few. Apple cash on hand = $250 billion"
For companies that size money difference doesn't mean much in litigation. Both can afford to buy top-flight lawyers and pay to keep them working for as long as it takes.
Charging licencing fees for other company's chips? (Score:2)
This reminds me of the days when Microsoft charged Dell a fee for every computer it shipped, even the ones that had Linux installed on them.
My personal tech market top indicator (Score:3)
I know that we've reached a tech market top when the number of legal squabble stories starts to exceed the number of innovation stories.
Kinda funny (Score:2)
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They don't have to. They choose to, in order to cut costs and increase profits, which boosts their stock price.
They could manufacture in the US, but their profitability would take a hit. They would be forced to raise prices to maintain profit margins, making them uncompetitive with companies that manufacture in Asia.
Do Americans want to work under the conditions and pay that (for example) Foxconn employees in China receive? All indications are that they don't, and all the tax breaks in the world aren't goin
"Qual" translated to german means "torment" (Score:2)
Meh. (Score:3)
And now why should we care about someone with that much cash on hand paying the same as everyone else?