Apple told Qualcomm: I bought a new campus for $445 million and may plan to speed up self-development of baseband chips

[Technology Description | Daily Highlights] According to foreign media sources, Apple wants to replace Qualcomm's modem processor very much, so it bought a new campus and plans to speed up theInnovation in research baseband chips.

Apple has taken a stab at buying the roughly 67.6-acre campus at the Rancho Vista Enterprise Center in San Diego, the longtime home of Hewlett-Packard's inkjet research labs.Now, though, the campus is part of Apple's expanding hardware and software engineering teams in the region.Meanwhile, Apple is looking to hire software, data science and other non-hardware talent.

The office Rancho Vista Enterprise Center was owned by HP before it sold to Swift Real Estate for $69 million, and HP leased back five of the seven buildings.

In addition, around 2019, Qualcomm will receive at least $4.5 billion from Apple as part of the patent settlement.What does it mean?The thing is, Qualcomm and Apple have been involved in a bitter patent dispute over the past few years.

Apple and Qualcomm's settlement was an unexpected turnaround for the companies early in the trial.At the time, rumors circulated that Apple had decided that Intel's modems would not be ready in time for the 5G iPhone, and that Apple had been using modems exclusively in the interim due to a fight with Qualcomm, which resulted in Apple having to pay a newly disclosed $4.5 billion to$4.7 billion to cover Qualcomm's losses.The money is unrelated to any future royalties that Apple will pay for using Qualcomm chips in its devices.

As for Apple, its billions of dollars have bought the company a six-year global patent license agreement with Qualcomm, with the right to extend the agreement for another two years when it expires, ending theLegal disputes with Qualcomm around the world and access to Qualcomm as a supplier of components for future devices.That's critical for Apple, as Qualcomm is essentially the only supplier until Apple starts making its own products as Intel exits the phone 5G modem market.

Interestingly, then-Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf said in a statement: "We are also pleased to have reached a multi-year agreement with Apple and look forward to serving as customersKeep supporting them."

If you're wondering how much $4.5 billion really means to Apple, Apple had about 50 times that amount in cash at the time, or about $225.4 billion.

It can be seen that up to now, Apple still has certain "scars" for the cooperation between baseband chips and Qualcomm. For this reason, it is also a good long-term solution to start self-developed baseband chips.Baseband chips, then the contract bargaining power with Qualcomm will be more advantageous.I said it again, but I don't panic if I have "food" on hand.

And there are also industry rumors, just last month, an Apple supply chain analyst said that Qualcomm modem chips will not be available in the 2023 iPhones for now, although the report has not been confirmed.But from this, we can see some possible clues that Apple wants to make its own baseband chips.

(by Aming)

-END-

You

How

What

Watch

?

Additional comments at the end of the article are welcome!

[Technology Description] Focus on the analysis of technology companies, speak with data, and show you the technology.This article and the author's responses represent personal views only and do not constitute any investment advice.