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  • webdoctors - Wednesday, December 28, 2016 - link

    Wow, thats a crazy amount of money! How would this work, Korea fines QCOM, QCOM raises the licensing/chip prices Samsung pays and QCOM gets paid back the money from Samsung the next quarter?

    I can't imagine anyone else except maybe LG complaining to Korea/Samsung oligarch about the QCOM abuse.
  • Lolimaster - Wednesday, December 28, 2016 - link

    Maybe they should add a ban of QCOM socs from any SK based company product. That will hurt.
  • ddriver - Wednesday, December 28, 2016 - link

    Samsung has become too big for its own good, or more accurately, for its master's good. Samsung will be split into pieces in the years to come, and its destruction will come from within. The note 7 fiasco has lit the fuse. The downside of being a de facto colony of the US under permanent military occupation - you are not allowed to go against your master's interests.
  • Morawka - Wednesday, December 28, 2016 - link

    qualcomm owns to many patents to fail man. i would have agree'd with you a year ago, but right now, there just isn't any serious competition. Qualcomm can offer 1 LTE modem that covers all worldwide bands, plus has your CPU cores of choice. Intel tried this year with the iPhone, and the modem is substandard compared to qualcomm's.

    They also keep innovating every year giving device makers turn-key solutions. BUT qualcomm charges something like 5% of the MSRP of the device, but only if it works in qualcomm's favor. If the device has a low MSRP, qualcomm will outright refuse to license it. they wanna make a solid $75 plus per handset sold.
  • sleepeeg3 - Thursday, December 29, 2016 - link

    5% of even an $800 phone would not be $75. Qualcomm has a break even point where they lose money.
  • marcolorenzo - Friday, December 30, 2016 - link

    He said Samsung, not Qualcomm.
  • Haul22 - Thursday, December 29, 2016 - link

    Samsung is far older and far more profitable than Qualcomm. It remains under the control of the founder's family, and no country's regulatory agencies have called for its breakup, so I don't know why you think it will be split. You are correct that you can't go against your master's interests. Samsung is Qualcomm's master in two key ways: 1) the Exynos line has far surpassed the Snapdragons in performance and 2) Samsung will be manufacturing Qualcomm's flagship Snapdragon 835. Any attempt by Qualcomm to jack up licensing fees on Samsung will be met with jacked up manufacturing fees, but regardless, Qualcomm would never be that petty. They will continue to do whatever they can to sell Snapdragons to Samsung for use on their low end and CDMA phones, and they will continue to try to license patents to Samsung. A decision by South Korea's regulatory agencies (not Samsung) won't change their business alliances.
  • ddriver - Thursday, December 29, 2016 - link

    What really matters here is that S. Korea's master is the USA, and Qualcomm is a US corporation. Having a little faster SOC doesn't mean much. Nor the fact that samsung will be making it, this is their business, they are not doing any favors to QC, if they don't do it other foundries will.

    The direct problem is that samsung has become a threat to crapple, and when crapple got fined 14 billion $ over tax evasion some US high level politicians went as far as to call it "an attack on US national interests". Then suddenly, and very conveniently, the latest and greatest note 7 ends up an 8 billion $ fiasco, resulting in a healthy boost to the otherwise mediocre iphone 7.

    I am not the kind of person who believes in coincidences that are too coincidental and too convenient, or that god loves crapple. IMO the note 7 was deliberately sabotaged, either internally at samsung, or via interception and tampering with shipments. Sounds crazy, some might say, however, I will refer back to the "threat to US national interests" part, and that intercepting and tampering with electronic product shipments is neither far-fetched nor unprecedented - the NSA has done it for years, in the name of national interests. Of course, judging by their corporate decisions, there are at least some in the board of directors that would be willing to ruin the company, and possibly in order, more technical departments as well. We will have to wait on the results from the official investigation, not that they are guaranteed to be true but still...

    Samsung has become too much a thorn in the eye, and with S. Korea being a de-facto US proxy, it isn't really allowed to do that. Samsung is vertically integrated, they make everything they put in their products, chips, pcbs, batteries, displays, thus they are in a position to be extremely competitive. And a US proxy is not allowed to eclipse its master, thus I suspect the years ahead will be about pecking apart and downsizing samsung into a less capable corporate entity.
  • johnnycanadian - Thursday, December 29, 2016 - link

    You could have stopped at "Sounds crazy".
  • webdoctors - Friday, December 30, 2016 - link

    Is this the prologue to some script you're trying to sell to Hollywood?
  • Shlong - Friday, December 30, 2016 - link

    Yea that is why the US stopped Toyota from being the #1 car manufacturer, get out of here.
  • jordanclock - Thursday, December 29, 2016 - link

    Samsung is already split into pieces. Are you unfamiliar with the corporate structure of Samsung?
  • Vatharian - Friday, December 30, 2016 - link

    What? You're completely detached from reality. Samsung's 'mobile and electronics' department is responsible only for a small fraction of income of the company - majority if it comes from heavy industry, chemicals and shipyards. By the way, in these parts, Hyundai is bigger...
  • Yojimbo - Wednesday, December 28, 2016 - link

    Lots of companies have been complaining about Qualcomm. Not just their customers, but their rivals. Texas Instruments and NVIDIA blame their exists from the tablet and smartphone markets on Qualcomm's practices. Icera had sued Qualcomm for their practices long before NVIDIA bought Icera.

    And the national trade commissions aren't going to accept Qualcomm continuing to abuse their position in order to pay for the fines. They will have to cease their uncompetitive business practices and pay the fine (assuming the ruling is upheld).
  • Morawka - Wednesday, December 28, 2016 - link

    This right here, is corporate greed on the part of Qualcomm. When you back your customers into a corner and force them to buy stuff they don't want, then your asking for anti-trust investigations.

    Kudos to the South Korean court! Hit em in the wallet hard.

    I'm a american, and i take pride in our home grown companies, but when they do stuff like this, i have no sympathy for them. This is textbook "standing on the backs of the little man" because they refused to license basic patents for smaller handset makers.

    Internet and cable companies are doing the same thing here in the USA, and i'm hoping one day someone with actual power will stand up to them. going through the courts seems like the only way to solve a lot of these problems, because congress sure won't do anything, they get paid to much lobbying money.
  • Danvelopment - Thursday, December 29, 2016 - link

    AKA Qualcomm dgaf about the SK market, but losing China would be an irrecoverable blow.
  • Danvelopment - Thursday, December 29, 2016 - link

    What will the SK brands (barring Samsung) do if they leave? Mediatek and Rockchip? Exynos is pricey and will have its own competition drama and Tegra and Atom are pretty much out of the market.
  • mxnerd - Thursday, December 29, 2016 - link

    What will Trump do once he is the office?

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