You realize that qualcomm's ridiculous licensing terms entitles them to a percentage of the sales price of the end device, right? At $2-3k per laptop that's not exactly chump change and would likely lead to a noticeable price increase on a laptop that's already considered "overpriced" by the general public.
Quote:
We broadly
provide per unit royalty caps that apply to certain categories of complete wireless devices, namely smartphones, tablets and laptops, which effectively
provide for a maximum royalty amount per device.
Yet they keep all their licensing deals a secret so that statement means exactly nothing. That cap could be $20k for all we know. Furthermore it's negotiated per oem and at their discretion.
No, I'm sure you're not the only one who has thought this. However, the apparent irony disappears quite readily when you examine the differences, the most important of which:
If you want a laptop but don't want to pay Apple prices, you can buy a laptop from Lenovo/Dell/Asus/you get the point.
If you want to play in the 4G/5G space you have to license Qualcomm's IP. They've been pretty aggressive about enforcing this. So aggressive in fact that they've been found guilty of anti-competitive behaviour by a US judge (in a case brought by the FTC), as well as by the EU (twice).
So yeah, in the face of that, it's difficult to argue that Apple's position - of selling premium devices in a competitive market - is in any way similar to Qualcomm's predatory tactics.
Now if you want to talk about the App Store on the other hand...
