Intel Breaks Qualcomm's Hold On Apple's Baseband Chips (wsj.com) 84
Long-time Slashdot reader randomErr writes: In a big blow to Qualcomm, Apple plans to incorporate Intel baseband chips into at least some models of the new iPhone 7. The selection of Intel chip means that in newer iPhones Apple will no longer support CDMA technology popularized by Qualcomm. The Wall Street Journal states that many industry analysts believe Intel could be supplying as many as half of of baseband chips for Apple's handsets.
This was the last key iPhone component that didn't have two sources, and the Journal estimates that Intel's revenues could now increase by up to $700 million before the end of 2016.
This was the last key iPhone component that didn't have two sources, and the Journal estimates that Intel's revenues could now increase by up to $700 million before the end of 2016.
The iPhone 7/7+ still support CDMA (Score:4, Interesting)
Why avoid again? (Score:1)
And is actually the primary reason to avoid this generation.
Why is that? I bought a T-Mobile version. It will work fine across the U.S.. It will work fine when traveling internationally. So why should I avoid the phone because they have two models?
The loss of the headphone jack is a money grab
People who believe that theory are dumber than a bag of hammers. If tit were a money grab Apple would not ship each phone with an adaptor... DUH.
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If you don't think nine dollars for a 10c device isn't a money grab them by all means, hand over your money $9 at a time.
I don't think that nine dollar retail for a two dollar device is a money grab; it's about typical.if you think they are producing that adapter (which has a custom microcontroller with DAC in it) costs closer to two dollars than 50 cents landed costs, you have never even been peripherally involved in product design.
Re:Why avoid again? (Score:4, Insightful)
"People who believe that theory are dumber than a bag of hammers."
Do you not know that Apple is the largest BlueTooth headphone maker on the planet? Hello, Beats.
If you can't smell the money grab, you need to have your brain checked for tumors.
Not thinking this through are you (Score:1)
The adapter is free. How does Apple make money on free adaptors again, which they pay to make BTW. So they make and give away hundreds of millions of adaptors, and sell maybe 10000 more BT headsets... spending tens of millions to make hundreds of thousands. HMM.
Do you even know how money works?
Bag of hammers.
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ya right those adapter probably cost apple 50 cents to make. but nice try
Fraud not. Not even in China. Probably around $2, when you factor in some R&D, mold design, BOM costs, etc. so they're doing ok at $9; but the overall profit of the adapter project is definitely negative.
And that doesn't even consider the R&D costs, etc, for redesigning the INCLUDED Headset, which is now Lightning-based.
And they are NOT recouping these costs in the phone, all things being equal; especially since they doubled the storage on the new model (and even went back and did the same thing
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You can't see the money grab because you know jack shit about BOM and cost reduction.
You also don't see the money grab because you're too narrow-minded. Let me expand your feeble mind on why they killed the headphone jack. [imgur.com]
I love how your lack of logical rebuttal below denotes your feeble mind. That's all children can do, after all, throw insults without any logical thought behind it. Typical behavior of an Apple user.
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You can't see the money grab because you know jack shit about BOM and cost reduction.
You also don't see the money grab because you're too narrow-minded. Let me expand your feeble mind on why they killed the headphone jack. [imgur.com]
I love how your lack of logical rebuttal below denotes your feeble mind. That's all children can do, after all, throw insults without any logical thought behind it. Typical behavior of an Apple user.
Been an embedded Dev. For nearly 4 decades; so I guess I DO know jack shit about BOMs and cost reduction. But there is no way you can get that down to your ten cents, no way, no how, no place.
And if Apple wanted to kill off alternative payment dongles that depended on the headphone jack, they could have done that without even touching the hardware, you imbecile. And what are you going to say when all those payment dongles simply switch to Bluetooth, or are redesigned for Lightning?
You really don't under
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"But there is no way you can get that down to your ten cents, no way, no how, no place."
You must not know nothing of Alibaba/Aliexpress. I can get several thousand dollar faceting machines for twenty bucks. Bulk headphone jacks are two fucking cents in quantities of 1,000 or more.
Embedded developer != Sourcing Manager.
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"But there is no way you can get that down to your ten cents, no way, no how, no place."
You must not know nothing of Alibaba/Aliexpress. I can get several thousand dollar faceting machines for twenty bucks. Bulk headphone jacks are two fucking cents in quantities of 1,000 or more.
Embedded developer != Sourcing Manager.
Alibaba/Aliexpress sells surplus crap. It is not a serious source. Their shit comes and goes on a weekly basis. Great for a prototype run to get a bunch of A/C adapters for cheap; but no serious company would EVER source from their fly-by-night vendors.
And a hobbyist who sources stuff from Digikey and Mouser is not a procurement department for a multibillion-dollar corporation.
And an embedded dev may not be a "sourcing manager"; but working ones generally have to work hand in hand with them.
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The devices in your image are all outdated pre-chip-card readers. There's a newer bluetooth-capable reader available from nearly every one of those vendors.
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"The devices in your image are all outdated pre-chip-card readers"
Not the European versions which were out for years and had chip+pin. Try again little penguin.
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Regardless, bluetooth versions are available, so removal of the headphone jack clearly isn't a path to payment domination for Apple.
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It's so sad that you're unable to figure out why Apple got rid of the 3.5mm jack. [imgur.com]
It's even more sad that you apparently don't have half a clue how planned obsolescence works - you force new licensing from third-party equipment manufacturers for that new Lightning adapter they're undoubtedly going to want to make and sell themselves.
Plus if people don't want to use the adapter, oh look, more reason for Apple to point you towards a pair of grossly-overpriced cheap-shit Beats headphones.
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So I can just walk into an apple store and grab an adapter from the bucket on the counter with the big "free" sign on it?
No?
I didn't think so.
Then, they are not free.
Is there anything dumber than a bag of hammers?
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"People who believe that theory are dumber than a bag of hammers."
Do you not know that Apple is the largest BlueTooth headphone maker on the planet? Hello, Beats.
If you can't smell the money grab, you need to have your brain checked for tumors.
It is you that has the brain tumor; and for the sake of the planet, let's hope it's a Glioma.
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Can't come up with an actual logical rebuttal, so you resort to insults. Typical braindead macfaggot.
No. I'm just tired of writing the same rebuttal over and over. Look up some of my comments to this article for reference.
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Your T-Mobile version will not work on any of these CDMA2000 networks [wikipedia.org]. In particular, it won't work in those parts of the United States where Verizon has a CDMA2000 signal and T-Mobile has 0 bars.
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Your T-Mobile version will not work on any of these CDMA2000 networks
Yes, I'm a little irked about that but these days the T-Mobile coverage across the US is pretty good, and getting better all the time - they seem to be doing a good job upgrading the network as time goes by.
I'll see in reality how well it works not having CDMA, but from the list of networks still on CDMA it doesn't seem like I'll be missing much. I was just in Alaska recently and unlike previous years I had been there, all of the small to
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Your T-Mobile version will not work on any of these CDMA2000 networks [wikipedia.org]. In particular, it won't work in those parts of the United States where Verizon has a CDMA2000 signal and T-Mobile has 0 bars.
I don't think my t-Mobile iPhone6 can roam onto CDMA right now anyway. Can you prove this is currently possible?
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Saying DUH makes you sound like a moron, especially when YOU don't think it through. How many people will loose the adapter and have to re-purchase it. How many will have their adapter break and have to re-purchase it. Your the idiot. DUH.
It's nine whole dollars; get over it. Just use the included Lightning headset until you get your new adapter to plug in your precious $10 earbuds (that don't sound any better than the Apple included ones). Or if you're really that unable to go without music for a few hours, carry a spare...
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And is actually the primary reason to avoid this generation.
Why is that? I bought a T-Mobile version. It will work fine across the U.S.. It will work fine when traveling internationally. So why should I avoid the phone because they have two models?
The loss of the headphone jack is a money grab
People who believe that theory are dumber than a bag of hammers. If tit were a money grab Apple would not ship each phone with an adaptor... DUH.
You didn't read the summary? The phones that use Qualcomm's baseband chip support CDMA, which Verizon and Sprint must have support for. The phones that use Intel's baseband chip can't, since Intel would then have had to license them from Qualcomm. So the phone you bought (assuming it's an Intel version) is one that works with T-Mobile and AT&T, but not w/ the other 2.
But you are right - there's no reason to avoid the phone just b'cos they have 2 internal variations (not models). In the US, most pe
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And is actually the primary reason to avoid this generation. The loss of the headphone jack is a money grab associated selling Bluetooth via their beats brand. Dividing their handset lineup is a return to the Motorola / LG / Samsung model of inflating sales by requiring a new device when transitioning to a new network.
Apple should have held their guns and demanded that Verizon and Sprint pony up to accelerate their rollout or risk their number one device having reduced coverage on their network. Customers won't complain about Apple if their friends with the same device have better service on another network. Instead they will switch carriers. To be clear, that is what consumers should want other people to do.
First off, the headphone jack rant is both tired and off topic.
Second, even Verizon and Sprint can't just snap their fingers and swap out a bunch of cell tower transceivers and antenna systems in the amount of time that would make a difference. But I sense that practicality isn't high on your priority list.
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It's a common misconception that CDMA is only used on Verizon and Sprint; practically all GSM carriers use a combination of three modulation schemes (and three radios), those being TDMA (aka 2g), CDMA (aka 3g), and OFDMA (aka 4g). GSM carriers have been using TDMA and CDMA for decades, though they used TDMA for voice and CDMA for data (TDMA efficiency is bad akin to old token-ring networks) hence a few years back, having two radios meant only GSM phones could do both voice and data simultaneously. The main
Re:The iPhone 7/7+ still support CDMA (Score:4, Informative)
UMTS (the 3G GSM standard) uses a CDMA-based modulation scheme, yes, but that is totally unrelated to what is discussed in this article. What the new Intel chips do not support is the IS-95 standard and derivatives, which also uses a CDMA-based scheme, but is otherwise unrelated, and which is misleadingly referred to just as "CDMA". UMTS is supported just fine by either modem.
Verizon, Sprint, etc. use IS-95 and successors (CDMA2000, EV-DO, etc.) for 2G and 3G service. The GP is correct that Verizon and Sprint would need a complete LTE rollout to turn that off and use only the standards that form part of the GSM family tree (GSM, UMTS, LTE).
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What the new Intel chips do not support ...
Intel makes BBs? I didn't even know, until now, that they did that, The vendors that spring immediately to mind when someone mentions BBs are Qualcomm, MediaTek, Broadcom, and... umm... Intel makes basebands? Did they buy someone?
Will LTE Verizon/Sprint then support _any_ phones? (Score:2)
Thanks for describing this in good detail, although I'm bound to forget the IS-95 stuff.
So once Verizon and Sprint switch over to a complete LTE rollout, does that imply that any LTE phone will work w/ them - just slip a SIM in? Like right now, I have a Lumia 550 which I use internationally, but not in the US, since it's not supported by Verizon. But if Verizon and Sprint did go full LTE, would all LTE phones automatically be supported by Verizon and Sprint just as easily as they are by AT&T and T-
Re:The iPhone 7/7+ still support CDMA (Score:5, Interesting)
Both GSM and CDMA are on the way out. The way phone makers and carriers are going is called Voice over LTE. Which basically means that in the future voice will be encoded and carried over the data LTE lines instead of a separate voice only system.
The theory is this will make phones simpler, free up radio spectrum for other uses, and improve call quality. And it will. I have tested some voice over LTE hand sets and the call quality is much better than over GSM and CDMA.
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the THEORY may be that... the reality is that the carriers will charge more, the carriers will no longer sell or provide service for "feature phones" (aka dumb flip phones) requiring more expensive "smart phones" with their stupid smart phone surcharges and mandatory data plans.
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There are feature phones that use the LTE network. Feature phones willl remain apart of the market for the foreseeable future as long as there is a demand for them.
Not everyone wants, or needs a smart phone.
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Both GSM and CDMA are on the way out.
CDMA is much faster on the way out than GSM. Carriers need a fallback strategy and that will be GSM for the foreseeable future.
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Both GSM and CDMA are on the way out.
But it'll be at least a decade before the areas which are now (still) only 2G get VoLTE transmitters, much less the 3G sites.
Watch the indicator on your phone as you drive through the countryside. 3G has been out how long and they still have 2G-only areas?
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Apparently your current phone is missing the grammar correction feature.
"I'd like 3 functionality, please."
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I don't think this made the Slashdot front page but Intel bought VIA's CDMA modem design and license [fiercewireless.com] about a year ago. Intel's modems currently only support GSM & LTE, whereas VIA never updated their CDMA modems to be LTE capable. It likely will take a couple years for Intel to integrate VIA's CDMA implementation with their LTE design, but once its done, Intel's modems will be just as capable as Qualcomm's.
CMDA isn't only important for the US Verizon/Sprint market, the much more important reason to impl
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Yeah. Well, (Score:2)
Re:Yeah. Well, (Score:5, Funny)
You can't have the government dictate stuff like that. Look at how few phones Europe has. The mandated GSM standard killed innovation and phones barely took off.
In 'Murica it makes sense to not only have competing standards but to have them on different frequencies. (Can't have T-mobile talking to a AT&T tower). This sort of competition has let companies pick the best and most profitable route for roll out. As a result we have the cheapest, fastest most ubiquitous cell phone setup anywhere in the world.
Capitalism wins again over dirty socialism and government intervention.
Re: Yeah. Well, (Score:2)
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Well the problem with data caps is that while a cell tower services one phone in a certain area, it can't service any other phones. Yes, you can make the degree smaller with special antennas, but the problem stays the same: cell towers are a shared medium. If you allowed everyone to surf at full speed during the whole month, the network would collapse.
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The principle of selling licenses of part of the spectrum is already a very big form of government intervention. Rather just allow any device to send at any frequency, and the people with the most powerful antennas will be able to get their signal over.
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don't you have massive monopolistic issues with AT&T, comcast and your shitty internet (you know the old fashioned non latent internet that doesn't use radio). Did capitalism win there too? Sometimes it's hard to see what is wrong when you don't know it could be a lot better.
Perhaps, but we're better at sarcasm than pretty much anyone else in the world.
USA! USA! USA!
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Sure capitalism will win when you live in a fantasy world or simply make stuff up (as you have done). Europe does not have "few" phones (http://www.pewglobal.org/2016/02/22/smartphone-ownership-and-internet-usage-continues-to-climb-in-emerging-economies/), but approximately as many as the corrupt US. Perhaps you're too young or too dumb to recall capitalism greatest triumph in 2008: the sub-prime mortgage that was started by American capitalists and provided a near disaster for all those "dirty socialism" c
Re: Yeah. Well, (Score:1)
And by "standard international bands" you mean... what? Common European bands? Japanese? Chinese?
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Removing the headphone jack perpetuate's Apple's vertical ecosystem and lock-in. Using chips tied to one carrier or the other's network perpetuates the carrier's lock-in, and sells more iPhones when people want to switch networks.
The sad part is this latter move undoes years of hard effort Apple's made in the 4 previous phone generations at altering the landscape of American cellephony to get consumers some much-needed network independence. g=
Get a life.
CDMA won the GSM vs CDMA standards war (Score:4, Informative)
TDMA was fine for voice. But when it came to high-speed data, GMS simply couldn't compete with CDMA's superior bandwidth allocation. They threw in the towel after a year - most implementations of 3G on GSM used wideband CDMA. They just named it UMTS, HSPA+, etc. because of sour grapes. This is why you could talk and use data at the same time on GSM phones - they had a TDMA radio for voice (still do), and a CDMA radio for data. CDMA phones used the same radio for voice and data (which were built on different protocols since voice was about a decade older) so couldn't do both simultaneously.
Most LTE implementations are OFDMA - does the same thing as CDMA, except using orthogonal frequencies instead of orthogonal codes. OFDMA requires more processing power to separate out the individual broadcasts, which is why it came after CDMA. Early OFDMA implementations like WiMax sucked up too much power with processors of the time, and would drain a cell phone battery in about 2-3 hours. It wasn't until a few years ago that low-power processors allowed us to implement OFDMA while not requiring a recharge halfway through the day. But CDMA was pretty much the proof of concept needed to make OFDMA a reality. Before CDMA, nobody knew if a real-life cellular network with hundreds of devices broadcasting simultaneously using orthogonal signaling would actually work or scale like theory said it would.
If the people saying the U.S. should've adoopted GSM had gotten their wish, our cellular data speeds today would probably be down below 1 Mbps. When a competitor introduces a far-superior product, it forces the other players in the market to improve, instead of sitting on their asses not improving things because people are paying them anyway. Now that LTE is becoming ubiquitous, loss of CDMA would be less of an issue. But any phone built without CDMA will not be able to fall back to 3G data in most areas of the world.
Re:CDMA won the GSM vs CDMA standards war (Score:4, Interesting)
If the people saying the U.S. should've adopted GSM had gotten their wish, our cellular data speeds today would probably be down below 1 Mbps. When a competitor introduces a far-superior product, it forces the other players in the market to improve, instead of sitting on their asses not improving things because people are paying them anyway.
The contra to this argument is that differing standards forced carrier lock-in, keeping consumers stuck with a device that wouldn't work on other carrier networks, allowing them to it on their asses and not improving things because people couldn't easily leave the carriers they were on.
Had the US adopted a carrier-neutral standard users could have easily switched carriers without buying a new device and device portability and consumer choice would have driven carrier improvements instead of consumers being forced to sit around and wait for a carrier to adopt improvements to their unique signalling.
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The UMTS (3G GSM) standard was developed in Japan more or less contemporaneously with IS-95 in the 1990s and pre-dates both CDMA2000 and any significant use of mobile data by anyone. I don't think the existence of IS-95 in the US had anything in particular to do with it. Both use the same coding technology (CDMA), but that dates back to the 1930s and is incidental.
IS-95 in the US has just meant pointless incompatibility and wasted resources. It didn't drive any innovation -- nothing in the LTE family is bas
Re: CDMA won the GSM vs CDMA standards war (Score:1)
Is that why so many carriers offer great deals to people who want to switch, some going so far as to buy out the rest of their contract?
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If the people saying the U.S. should've adoopted GSM had gotten their wish, our cellular data speeds today would probably be down below 1 Mbps.
One doesn't follow the other. The adoption of one standard at one point in time does not prohibit a change in standard at a later point in time. My old Nokia brick doesn't have an LTE chip in it either, and it seems the USA is quite laggard when it comes to upping phone speeds, something which was rolled out in countries which were GSM only before it came into the USA.
Re:CDMA won the GSM vs CDMA standards war (Score:5, Informative)
I hardly know where to begin. You're confusing standards with modulation techniques. You're also confusing GSM the standard (1991, TDMA, voice with GPRS and then EDGE) with GSM the "class" (which includes UMTS, HS(D)PA(+), and LTE). The latter is a set of standards defined by the 3GPP [wikipedia.org], whose scope now includes the maintenance of the original GSM standards.
CDMA is a modulation technique (actually a "channel access method", basically a way to share the medium vs an actual encoding). Other modulation techniques are AM, FM, QAM, CODFM, and OFDMA (OFDMA is one channel-access version of OFDM - 802.11G uses OFDM with CSMA/CA instead). There's a "class" of standards built on IS-95 (you may remember it as cdmaOne) that includes CDMA2000, 1xRTT, and EV-DO. These did pioneer the use of CDMA for cellphones, but everything uses CDMA nowadays, and GSM (the lineage) has used CDMA (W-CDMA) since UMTS.
The point is, in non-RF cellphone usage, the antonym to CDMA is not TDMA, but GSM. And GSM the lineage has very much won the standards war with LTE. Over 90% of devices in the world use GSM-lineage standards, including most Verizon and Sprint devices (which are right at home on LTE). Eventually the legacy IS-95 derived standards will be completely turned off and the US will have gotten over its weird not-world-standard fetish, at least for cellphones.
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"Who gives a tuppence about the baseband"
Intel does, it's a cheap-ass and easy part to manufacture and they can make an easy profit off of it. Apple does, because they can get it cheaper from Intel, thus increasing the per-unit profit per phone that is equipped with the Intel baseband chip.