1. i_plod_an_dr_void's Avatar
    Was Qualcomm ripping off Peter to pay Paul?

    Yes in the latest installment of wild speculation...remember when Qualcomm was seemingly ripping off Blackberry between 2010 and 2015 to the tune of almost 1 billion dollars? (Possibly killing Blackberry's homespun BB10 dreams as a consequence during those critical years?)
    Did anyone else notice in the latest entrenched warfare round between Qualcomm and Apple, that around the same time Apple was demanding (or being offered?) a billion dollars from Qualcomm for exclusivity?

    Did Qualcomm figure, well okay we'll pay Apple by robbing Blackberry blind and bleeding it dry? The timing and the dollar amounts closely overlapp. Crazy speculation? Or more to meet the eye?
    That was a lot of sloshy churn happening in Qualcomm's accounting department at the same time it seems. Does that give Blackberry further fodder to trial the issue a little further to Cupertino on the damages aspect?
    Crazy irresponsible counter-claim speculations are welcomed...if you have an article to springboard off and jump to concussions ...
    https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/0...ple_ftc_trial/
    01-15-19 09:55 PM
  2. i_plod_an_dr_void's Avatar
    oops! Iresponsible. oops! Qualcomm...(.I must have been letter hoarding).
    01-15-19 10:07 PM
  3. BergerKing's Avatar
    That's OK, I was cruising through, saw, and fixed that for you. If you ever have need of an edit, report your own post and let someone know what is wrong so it can be fixed.
    i_plod_an_dr_void likes this.
    01-15-19 10:34 PM
  4. Dunt Dunt Dunt's Avatar
    I don't think Qualcomm can be blamed for BB10's demise... BlackBerry's and Qualcomm issues arose from royalty payments based on expected BB10 sales, being much higher than BB10 sales delivered. It pretty well documented.

    If anyone was really damaged by Qualcomm's "gift" to Apple, it was other chip makers that got squeezed out by Qualcomm's monopolistic practices.
    01-17-19 07:37 AM
  5. i_plod_an_dr_void's Avatar
    I don't think Qualcomm can be blamed for BB10's demise... BlackBerry's and Qualcomm issues arose from royalty payments based on expected BB10 sales, being much higher than BB10 sales delivered. It pretty well documented.

    If anyone was really damaged by Qualcomm's "gift" to Apple, it was other chip makers that got squeezed out by Qualcomm's monopolistic practices.
    Putting on our imagination caps for a moment:
    The hypothetical answer of course to this maybe "fictional" situation could be:...
    Of course if your supplier gives your major competitor (Apple) a billion dollars for not much (at the time) and say maybe demands a billion dollar deal from the other guy (perhaps it was a minimum price for BlackBerry demanded by QC,.... you know we'll do it (supply you) for this volume of devices, but we won't do it AT ALL (supply line pressure) for any less devices, then it could still be that wildly speculative situation. Of course this is speculation. But I didn't hear about them offering a Bill to BlackBerry at the same time.

    If I was running a corporation and I had to come up with a billion dollar kickback or whatever the actual technically legal term is (locked-in future considerations/seed money ...at the core of the apple lol etc), where would I scrounge around? Knowing of course my Board would ask....hey why we down a billion in projections this year? or over a couple years? It might be hard to disguise that dip otherwise.
    01-18-19 03:07 PM
  6. Troy Tiscareno's Avatar
    The two issues have nothing to do with each other.

    Qualcomm's licensing is based on sales volumes and the ASP of the device. BB overpaid because their payments were based on pre-launch BB10 sales projections (made by BB) which turned out to be grossly inaccurate.

    Qualcomm's deal with Apple is to get Apple to stop using Intel modem in their mobile devices. Qualcomm sees Intel as a major threat, so it wants to make the mobile market unprofitable for Intel, so they will give up and leave the market for something else.

    Taking away Intel's biggest customer goes a long way to accomplishing that goal - by not being able to sell in high volume, Intel can't be price competitive and still pay its development costs, much less make a profit.

    These events happened years apart and there isn't a single thread to connect them. Plus, Occam's Razor...
    01-18-19 03:45 PM
  7. i_plod_an_dr_void's Avatar
    The two issues have nothing to do with each other....

    ....These events happened years apart and there isn't a single thread to connect them. Plus, Occam's Razor...
    You may be right but the Qualcomm issue with overpayment was for 2010-2015 Blackberry devices....and the apple issue was..."it's become clear that the case may pivot around a single payment made by Qualcomm to Apple back in 2011."
    So the timelines do seem to overlap...knowing of course the actual events take some lead time to execute. I don't know when exactly BB and Qualcomm first discussed then finalized their supply deal. It is interesting. Hey would Apple hurt if their major competitor was paying more than it should? ... and hurt them enough to knock them out of the smartphone marketplace significantly ? I don't think they would have shed a tear. Blackberry did seem to be Steve Jobs biggest concern when they rolled out the iphone.
    01-18-19 04:23 PM
  8. Troy Tiscareno's Avatar
    BB wasn't Apple's major competitor after 2007. And certainly by 2011, BB wasn't anyone's major competitor. Apple was worried about Google and Samsung - BB (and Microsoft, and anyone else) could safely be ignored. Don't fool yourself.
    01-19-19 03:16 PM
  9. i_plod_an_dr_void's Avatar
    BB wasn't Apple's major competitor after 2007. And certainly by 2011, BB wasn't anyone's major competitor. Apple was worried about Google and Samsung - BB (and Microsoft, and anyone else) could safely be ignored. Don't fool yourself.
    Can't see where the numbers are foolin me. Sales 2011 BB:50+ million units, Apple 72+million units......hardly a run-away never catch me lead for Apple at the time. (yes realizing those sales were the old BB OS's, and that it's sales trajectory for 2012 looked to be accelerating even higher for BB,)
    01-23-19 01:13 AM
  10. Troy Tiscareno's Avatar
    Except that BBOS peaked in 2010 in developed markets, where BB sold a high mix of flagship phones at high prices with decent profits. While unit numbers went up in 2011, that's because sales in developing markets spiked - but those were overwhelmingly low-end Curves and old/clearance models with little to no profit. It needs to be mentioned that BIS fees still grew, which was great for BB and their primary source of revenue, but 2011 sales in developed markets fell and were on a strongly down-trending trajectory. BB was well aware of what that meant, and that developing markets would only be a few years behind.

    BB wasn't the only one either. It was talked about in the tech press, and right here on CB, though of course most chose to believe BB's spin that things were great, even though some questioned BB's future. Kevin himself opined that BB should have adopted Android back in 2008 and worked with Google to secure it and then make BB-Android phones much as has happened in the last couple of years. It's not that he thought that Android was especially great, but because he could see the obvious financial advantages (and the financial difficulty of attempting to build and support a whole platform) and he could see that developers were rapidly adopting Android as the "other" platform - the iOS alternative. That was clear way back in 2008, though it was just a trend and not a done deal at that time. By 2010, it was quite clear that the winners had already been decided, mostly by OEMs and developers.
    01-23-19 01:56 AM

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