Stefan Mileschin

FTC Qualcomm trial

One of the interesting twists that has appeared in the FTC investigation into Qualcomm is that it transpires that Intel had an opportunity to invest in 4G and LTE and it confirmed to the court that it decided not to do it, as part of its business strategy.

Always connected PC, the Qualcomm initiative pushing towards a PC that can last up to 20jsh or hours that is always connected and can sync emails and social waste of time services, meant that in late 2018 Intel presented us a Sony Cove and a 10nm contender that will get you always connected 20ish hours of battery.

This is what competition brings, and Intel only started to seriously think about investing in modems when an Apple offer came to the table. Apple wants multiple sources, this is nothing extraordinary to the computer industry. If one has two or more suppliers, you can make them compete for the deal and essentially get a better price for the device.

Companies with volumes of Apple want to squeeze every cent. The irony is that a 1200 Euro phone has a Bill of Material of $400ish - or roughly one third of the price.

Let’s take, for example, the FTC trial revelation that Apple wanted to pay $1.5 per iPhone instead of the previous $7.5 license. Assuming that Apple sells 45 million phones per quarter. This simple match $1.5 dollar per phone could earn Qualcomm $67.5 million - a far cry from $337,5 million. A modem fee comes on top of this number and it is rumored that it can be as high as $30 per device.

https://fudzilla.com/news/mobile/480...o-invest-in-4g