I think the real reason that the iphone is just EDGE and not 3G, is in fact due to Qualcomm.
Qualcomm have the essential patents required for 3G, and they demand very large royalties. All the main cellphone manufacturers have been trying to reduce these charges with little success. The charges are so high, that most 3G handsets have very little profit, some even make a loss.
These charges would likely to be many 10's of dollars per iphone, and if Apple sell 10 million of them, that means paying Qualcomm hundreds of millions of dollars per year.
I would be very surprised indeed if we see 3G ever in the iphone for this reason.
If the iphone contained the 3G technology and it was simply disabled (as might be suggested in the article), Apple would still have to pay Qualcomm. So I doubt very much it is built in and can be switched on!
And, for sure, without the 3G hardware, there is no possibility of doing 3G as a software upgrade alone.
Or you could just be pulling crap out your ass, but yeah, what you said or that.
In the tens of dollars? First of all the expression is horrible, second, people that actually know things put 4~5% of cost of manufacture on Qualcomm licensing for 3G. This is on phones whose wholesale cost is less than $150.
I can't think of any 3G phone which is sold by manufacturers to distributors at a loss. Carriers may take a loss after subsidy, but actually right now they are a lot closer to charging their cost then they were before 3G. LG CU500 Cost: $150 Price: $100 Nokia 6102i Cost: $120 Price: $10
Margins are up baby!
Never see a 3G iPhone? It was in the keynote that at some point there will be a 3G iPhone.
Richard appears to have fallen for the European UMTS handset manufacturer anti-Qualcomm propaganda.
Here is the reality: If you do not buy a UMTS chipset from Qualcomm, the royalty is 5% of the price (not cost) of the unit. This royalty is the same for all UMTS handset manufacturers. (If you utilise a Qualcomm UMTS chipset, the royalty is built in to the price of the chip.) So every UMTS handset manufacturer starts on an equal footing. If a vendor loses money on UMTS handsets, you can't blame Qualcomm; you can only blame the vendor.
So let's do the math: At US$600 per unit, IF the phone contains a non-QC UMTS chip, that's US$30 to QC -- hardly the "many 10s of dollars" mentioned here. If the phone contains a QC chipset, that's US$25-35 to Qualcomm and no further royalty. Ten million iPhones shipped means $300 odd million to Qualcomm. It also means $6 billion to Apple. $300 million only seems exorbitant if you take the number completely out of context, as Euro handset vendors are so often wont to do.
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I think the real reason that the iphone is just EDGE and not 3G, is in fact due to Qualcomm.
Qualcomm have the essential patents required for 3G, and they demand very large royalties. All the main cellphone manufacturers have been trying to reduce these charges with little success. The charges are so high, that most 3G handsets have very little profit, some even make a loss.
These charges would likely to be many 10's of dollars per iphone, and if Apple sell 10 million of them, that means paying Qualcomm hundreds of millions of dollars per year.
I would be very surprised indeed if we see 3G ever in the iphone for this reason.
If the iphone contained the 3G technology and it was simply disabled (as might be suggested in the article), Apple would still have to pay Qualcomm. So I doubt very much it is built in and can be switched on!
And, for sure, without the 3G hardware, there is no possibility of doing 3G as a software upgrade alone.
Or you could just be pulling crap out your ass, but yeah, what you said or that.
In the tens of dollars? First of all the expression is horrible, second, people that actually know things put 4~5% of cost of manufacture on Qualcomm licensing for 3G. This is on phones whose wholesale cost is less than $150.
I can't think of any 3G phone which is sold by manufacturers to distributors at a loss. Carriers may take a loss after subsidy, but actually right now they are a lot closer to charging their cost then they were before 3G. LG CU500 Cost: $150 Price: $100 Nokia 6102i Cost: $120 Price: $10
Margins are up baby!
Never see a 3G iPhone? It was in the keynote that at some point there will be a 3G iPhone.
Richard appears to have fallen for the European UMTS handset manufacturer anti-Qualcomm propaganda.
Here is the reality: If you do not buy a UMTS chipset from Qualcomm, the royalty is 5% of the price (not cost) of the unit. This royalty is the same for all UMTS handset manufacturers. (If you utilise a Qualcomm UMTS chipset, the royalty is built in to the price of the chip.) So every UMTS handset manufacturer starts on an equal footing. If a vendor loses money on UMTS handsets, you can't blame Qualcomm; you can only blame the vendor.
So let's do the math: At US$600 per unit, IF the phone contains a non-QC UMTS chip, that's US$30 to QC -- hardly the "many 10s of dollars" mentioned here. If the phone contains a QC chipset, that's US$25-35 to Qualcomm and no further royalty. Ten million iPhones shipped means $300 odd million to Qualcomm. It also means $6 billion to Apple. $300 million only seems exorbitant if you take the number completely out of context, as Euro handset vendors are so often wont to do.
I have no affiliation whatsoever with Qualcomm.