Updated on April 12 at 5:14 p.m. PT: To include Australian release information. Virtual reality 101: CNET tells you everything you need to know about what VR is and how it'll affect your life. CNET Magazine: Check out a sampling of the stories you'll find in CNET's newsstand edition. While the global version will include the key feature from the get-go, phones coming to the US, Australia and the UK will have to wait a little longer. Don't expect to start talking to Samsung's Bixby voice assistant when you boot up your new Galaxy S8 later this month.
"Over the last 10 years, Apple has played a significant role in bringing the benefits of mobile technology to consumers with its popular products and services," Don Rosenberg, executive vice president and general counsel of Qualcomm, said in a statement, "But Apple could not have built the incredible iPhone franchise that has made it the most profitable company in the world, capturing over 90 percent of smartphone profits, without relying upon Qualcomm's fundamental cellular technologies."Apple referred CNET back to its filing from January, in which it said, "For many years Qualcomm has unfairly insisted on charging royalties for technologies they have nothing to do with, The more Apple innovates with unique features such as TouchID, advanced displays, and cameras, to name just a few, the more money Qualcomm collects for no reason and the more expensive it becomes for Apple to fund these innovations."Qualcomm is the world's biggest provider of mobile chips, and bats in the attic iphone case it created some of the essential standards for connecting phones to cellular networks, The company derives a significant portion of its revenue from licensing that technology to hundreds of handset manufacturers and others, Apple designs the processors in its iPhones and iPads, but it buys chips from Qualcomm to connect to 4G LTE and other cellular networks..
Under Qualcomm's licensing structure, Apple, through its manufacturers such as Foxconn, pays Qualcomm a fee for its chips and another fee for the intellectual property utilized in the mobile phones. Most components suppliers bundle the IP cost in with the chip sales price. Qualcomm, though, says its intellectual property is essential for the operation of a mobile phone, not just the chips inside handsets. For the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, introduced late last year, Apple also started buying 4G LTE chips from another supplier, Intel. Because Qualcomm owns IP related to 3G and 4G phones, any handset maker using the technology has to pay it a licensing fee, even if they don't use Qualcomm's chips. That fee is based on the total value of the device ($650 in the case of the iPhone) versus the value of the chip (closer to $20), but it's capped at a certain level. Qualcomm didn't disclose the limit, but it's lower than the actual $650 price of the iPhone.
As with most licensing terms, this gets complicated pretty quickly, But essentially, Apple bears a cost for using Qualcomm technology in its phones, whether or not the chips it includes are directly from Qualcomm, Qualcomm on Monday denied "each and every allegation" Apple made in its January lawsuit and cited 35 different defenses, including that "to the extent that Apple has suffered damages, if at all, all damages were caused by Apple's own actions." The company talked about the investments it has made in R&D, as bats in the attic iphone case well as the innovations it has contributed to the mobile market..
It also accused Apple of breach of contract and interfering with agreements and relationships Qualcomm has with contract manufacturers. It said Apple has withheld money (the amount was redacted) owed to Qualcomm under a contract relating to a high-speed feature of Qualcomm's chips. It also said Apple hurt Qualcomm by "deliberately making false statements to government agencies about Qualcomm's licensing practices and chipset business."Qualcomm alleged that Apple hurt consumers by limiting Qualcomm chips in the iPhone 7 to make performance more comparable to chips from Intel. (Apple chose to use modems from both companies in certain versions of its popular smartphone.) Qualcomm said Apple threatened to not make public comparisons about the "superior performance of Qualcomm-powered iPhones.""Apple's goal is clear -- to leverage its immense power to force Qualcomm into accepting less than fair value for the patented technologies that have led innovation in cellular technology and helped Apple generate more than $760 billion in iPhone sales," Qualcomm said in its filing.