Qualcomm Declares War On Apple

[Drael646464]

Now THIS is interesting. lol (Please move to phone wars, thanks)

Qualcomm is in trouble. After facing heavy fines in South Korea and China, their troubles have compounded due to a $1 billion lawsuit by Apple. With the FTC also coming after them, Qualcomm’s profitability and stock are likely to keep suffering in the near future.
Qualcomm’s profitability is largely contingent on their patent licensing royalties. If they end up losing and having to change their licensing terms, it could mean the end of Qualcomm’s dominance in the market.
All of Qualcomm’s recent troubles provide a window of opportunity that competitors like Intel can*take advantage of.
If Qualcomm succeeds in their case against Apple, the smartphone manufacturers losses would be immeasurable. The loss of a key market like the US would leave Apple reeling behind competitors like Samsung and Huawei.

https://dazeinfo.com/2017/05/05/qualcomm-apple-dispute-iphone-ban/

 

[Drael646464]

You could be forgiven for thinking this isn't a big deal for either company.

But to put this in context last quarter was 4.3% growth. But both Samsung and apple experienced negligible growth. The growth primarily coming from the Chinese budget specialists - Huawei, OPPO and Vivo.

We have reached saturation in mature markets. It's winding down the smartphone biz, the boom is ending, and thus, so will sales of premium phones...(in favour of price point competition and more midrange handsets and more brands)

As you can see here:

https://dazeinfo.com/2017/05/01/worldwide-smartphone-shipments-q1-2017/

In this context, a serious blow to apple, to their smartphone revenue, which is their major source of income, could represent a massive negative growth and loss of revenue. A massive blow, at a time just before the company needs to transition into other investments and market strategies.

And in this same context, a blow to qualcomms royalty model couldn't happen at a worse time - right when the premium market, where the majority of their royalties have been coming from is winding down, and when the smartphone market is entering into price point competition, where cheaper handsets can't much afford to pay more.

I knew saturation would be interesting, but the timing of this, could not be worse.

And then there's this - Intel using their 10mn process to make ARM chipsets -

http://www.phonearena.com/news/Inte...0nm-ARM-based-mobile-and-IoT-chipsets_id84194

I'm also not sure how many arm chipset makers are using the royalties model. That could explain how they have always managed to be cheaper, in cheaper handsets compared with x86?