LG's 5G Phones in Doubt as Chip Deal With Qualcomm Set To Expire

Sales of LG's new 5G smartphone looked uncertain this week after the firm said it was unable to narrow differences with Qualcomm to renew a chip license deal that is due to expire this month. From a report: In a U.S. court filing late on Tuesday, the South Korean firm opposed Qualcomm's efforts to put a sweeping U.S. antitrust decision against it on hold, arguing setting the ruling aside could force it into signing another unfair deal. "If Qualcomm does not participate in negotiations with LGE in accordance with the Court's Order, LGE will have no option but to conclude license and chipset supply agreements once again on Qualcomm's terms," LG's filing in the federal court in San Jose, California said. The lack of clarity over a new license deal raises concerns over the rollout of LG's newly launched 5G smartphones, crucial for the loss-making handset maker to boost flagging smartphone sales and catch up with Samsung.

Re:

[cheesybagel]

AFAIK it's either Qualcomm or one of two Chinese companies (one being Huawei).
There should be more modems next year though.

The iPad Pro is a good use for that case

[SuperKendall]

A minute of 1080p video renedered on the processor takes a minute. A minute of 1080p video renedered on the Nvidia card takes 10 seconds.I don't think an iPad has the same performance of my PC for renedering videos longer than a short clip.

Are you sure about that? [youtube.com]

I can't imagine using Photoshop without a keyboard and mouse,

Why wouldn't you just use them then, since in iOS 13 keyboard and mouse are both supported on the iPad (now if Adobe would just finish up Photoshop... I'll bet they are waiting on IOS 13)

Re:

[unixisc]

Is it the fault of Qualcomm for being the only game in town, or the fault of the manufacturers who put all their eggs into one basket? The semiconductor industry has a consortium to do its leading-edge research to prevent things like this. I think the problem is, and will always be, that things change at too fast a pace today.

Was it manufacturers that put all their eggs in one basket, or was it the fault of Qualcomm's competitors that they folded? In the last decade, there was a healthy GSM vs CDMA market split, and at the time, Qualcomm was a minority - being a US/Japan/Korea only player. Since then, Nokia and Ericsson stopped being players in the mobile chipset space - moving more to central office equipment, and the disappearance of other companies, like Freescale, Philips, et al pretty much saw to it that Qualcomm became t

Way to go Qualcomm!

[RickyShade]

Smart business tactic: Price yourself out of the market! Brilliant!

Re:

[unixisc]

But they are the monopoly on mobile phone standards, thanks to the way companies like Nokia, Ericsson, Freescale et al have all bombed out. That's the problem: Qualcomm became the standard by default, and is therefore now doing what any company does: protecting its bottom line. As someone who worked in the semiconductor business and saw how both the Chinese and the Koreans would beat us down in ASPs, I don't blame Qualcomm for holding their line. Particularly if LG doesn't want to pay anything extra for

Re:

[jimbo]

Protecting your bottom line by being expensive is normal. QC seems to have gingerly slipped into something worse than that. They keep customers in an iron grip, selling them products while double or triple dipping on patent licenses from both the customer and their manufacturing partners, et al. They have been found in violation of FRAND in several countries since 2016 and there may be a US ruling (or not) to similar effect coming up, unless we see some sort of boring settlement.

There's every indication tha

At this rate

[RhettLivingston]

whether or not Qualcomm's tech created the industry it will be the one to destroy it - or at least fragment it as others implement tech to new Qualcomm-free standards.

What we need is a "5G" competitor that seeks to extend WiFi usage instead. We already have gigabit capability via WiFi. My phone uses it today and transitions smoothly between mobile and WiFi or from one WiFi to the next. The 5G leaders have already admitted they will only ever fully serve urban areas. We just need for the cable providers to g

Re:

[jimbo]

Yes, mmWave 5G (>24GHz) will probably only be seen in densely populated areas. However 5G protocols and equipment encompass the entire spectrum and offer benefits at 700MHz as well as mmWave.

That's not to say you're wrong about the benefits of WiFi, just that properly implemented 5G will offer better channel management and more dynamic bandwidth allocation on any band.

Chip supplies are not affected

[martrootamm]

An LG spokesperson clarified, that the court situation does not affect supplies of Qualcomm chips to LG. Source. [androidauthority.com]

Therefore, the 'concerns about rollout' is speculation (IMO) by an analyst whose assertion got a signal boost from Reuters.

Any possible delay — which is just a rumour — could be attributed to a thorough testing of hardware and software.

Judge Lucy Koh ruled, that Qualcomm has had onerous prices for use of its patents, and that Qualcomm should 'sign new patent licensing deals wi