Qualcomm accuses Apple of giving Intel trade secrets



[ad_1]

This site may generate affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Terms of use.

The already acrimonious fight between Apple and Qualcomm has become even uglier nowadays. The two companies have been losing ground for years on a range of royalty and royalty issues – Apple's decision to deploy Intel modems on its iPhones is seen as a move away from Qualcomm. There are parallels between the Apple-Qualcomm relationship and the Apple-Samsung fights of many years ago, but the battle between Apple and Qualcomm has been more ugly. Now, Qualcomm has accused Apple of stealing trade secrets and sharing them with Intel so that Chipzilla's modem technology is ready for the iPhone.

The charge of stealing business secrets is potentially explosive. These types of flights are treated extremely seriously in technology because they can ruin years or even decades of business work to bring long-term projects to market. Imagine the damage to Intel, for example, if a vital processor function is discovered in a competitor. This competitor would have every right to request that the part be removed from the market until it can be redrawn. Other companies, fearing revenge for the counterfeit part, could refuse to carry the competitor's share. Issues of trade secret theft were raised between Intel and AMD and AMD and Nvidia in 2008 and 2013, respectively, and in both cases, you do not see the rival company making a sound in protest. Although there are obviously exceptions and that corporate espionage is one thing, companies in general do not want to go up to incorporate the intellectual property of another company into their products.

ModemPerf23

Intel's performance lagged behind Qualcomm, but the gap seemed to be narrowing.

According to Qualcomm, he was barred from auditing Apple's use of the source code and tools provided by Qualcomm for the development of the iPhone. He claims to have discovered this commercial secret theft after being discovered in a related lawsuit to discover evidence that confidential information was incorrectly provided to Intel for the purpose of improving Intel's performance and modems. We've already written that the Qualcomm modem solution was generally better than Intel's on Apple iPhone, that the situation improved from 2016 to 2017, but that Apple has disabled some features of its handsets to ensure parity between the devices equipped with each one. Despite this, Intel modems have consistently lagged Qualcomm's performance in 2017.

We have not yet seen any figures for this year, but the assumption was that the 2016-17 enhancements reflected Intel's growing expertise in the field and improvements to its silicon. They could always. The allegations, after all, are not the same as the proven facts. But if Apple had actually stolen trade secrets from Qualcomm and gave them to Intel, it could open a huge ball of worms that could affect Intel's modems business, depending on Intel's specifics and risks. . . Of course, Apple strongly denies any violation of the agreement or any inappropriate data sharing.

Now read: Apple's next iPhone may eliminate Qualcomm altogether, iPhone X modem tests show that Qualcomm beats Intel, and all iPhone Xs do not use the same modem and operate differently

[ad_2]
Source link