Q’comm Profits Dive Amid Patent Disputes

Net income falls 57 percent in fiscal year

 You know when you hear as many as five executives on a quarterly conference call, times are challenging. So it was when Qualcomm Inc. reported results for the end of its fiscal 2017.

Quarterly and annual revenues of $5.9 billion and $22.3 billion were both down 5 percent compared to 2016 results, using GAAP figures. Given the loss of licensing revenues from Apple and another unnamed customer, it was not surprising profits took a bigger dive to $200 million for the quarter and $2.5 billion for the year, down 89 percent and 57 percent from 2016, respectively.

The forecast is for continued grim weather. The mobile chip giant expects flat revenues for its next quarter despite a 5 percent expected rise in its chip set unit sales. Overall cellular device unit sales could rise 8 percent  next year, but their average selling prices may drop given a growing share are going into more cost-sensitive systems in cars, networking and the Internet of Things.

Qualcomm’s CEO and CFO were joined on the call by two of its legal experts and its chip set group manager. They fielded several questions on a delayed merger with NXP and multiple legal disputes with Apple but provided few new details.

Executives said they are hopeful the NXP deal will be approved soon by four regulators still reviewing it, but it might take until early 2018. They suggested they see no immediate resolution for the many legal disputes over patent licensing with Apple. Separately they provided no meaningful insights on a separate dispute with an unnamed customer that stopped paying royalties in the second quarter.

Speaking of the multiple court cases with Apple, Qualcomm general counsel Donald Rosenberg said, “litigation of this magnitude takes a while, you can’t focus on any particular short-term event.”

Cases Qualcomm brought against Apple with the U.S. International Trade Commission and in Germany may move more quickly than others with some results expected by mid- to late 2018. However, “until then, I don’t think you will see much of consequence in terms of an ultimate outcome, and it will play out like most complex litigation,” he added.

Apple and Samsung are still battling over a massive patent infringement suit that goes back to 2012 that even had a hearing at the Supreme Court in 2016.

Next page: Korea, Taiwan rulings rack up $1.6B in fines

Royalty losses dragged down results amid a maturing smartphone market. Click to enlarge. (Source: Qualcomm)

 

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IPHONE X

after months of hype, endless speculation, and a wave of last-minute rumors about production delays, the iPhone X is finally here. Apple says it’s a complete reimagining of what the iPhone should be, 10 years after the original revolutionized the world. That means some fundamental aspects of the iPhone are totally different here — most notably, the home button and fingerprint sensor are gone, replaced by a new system of navigation gestures and Apple’s new Face ID unlocking system. These are major changes.

New iPhones and major changes usually command a ton of hype, and Apple’s pushing the hype level around the iPhone X even higher than usual, especially given the new thousand-dollar starting price point. For the last few years, we've said some variation of "it's a new iPhone" when we’ve reviewed these devices. But Apple wants this to be the beginning of the next 10 years. It wants the iPhone 10 to be more than just the new iPhone. It wants it to be the beginning of a new generation of iPhones. That's a lot to live up to.

This review is going to be a little different, at least initially: Apple gave most reviewers less than 24 hours with the iPhone X before allowing us to talk about it. So consider this a working draft. These are my opening thoughts after a long, intense day of testing the phone, but I’ll be updating everything in a few days after we’re able to test performance and battery life, do an in-depth camera comparison, and generally live with the iPhone X in a more realistic way. Most importantly: please ask questions in the comments! I’ll try to answer as many of them as I can in the final, updated review.

But for now — here it goes.

at a glance, the iPhone X looks so good one of our video editors kept saying it looked fake. It’s polished and tight and clean. My new favorite Apple thing is that the company managed to move all the regulatory text to software, leaving just the word “iPhone” on the back. The screen is bright and colorful and appears to be laminated tighter than previous iPhones, so it looks like the pixels are right on top. Honestly, it does kind of look like a live 3D render instead of an actual working phone.

But it is a real phone, and it’s clear it was just as challenging to actually build as all the rumors suggested. It’s gorgeous, but it’s not flawless. There’s a tiny sharp ridge between the glass back and the chrome frame that I feel every time I pick up the phone. That chrome frame seems destined to get scratched and dinged, as every chrome Apple product tends to do. The camera bump on the back is huge; a larger housing than the iPhone 8 Plus fitted onto a much smaller body and designed to draw attention to itself, especially on my white review unit. There are definitely going to be people who think it’s ugly, but it’s growing on me.

There’s no headphone jack, which continues to suck on every phone that omits it, but that’s the price you pay for a bezel-less screen with a notch at the top. Around the sides, you’ll find the volume buttons, the mute switch, and the sleep / wake button. The removal of the home button means there are a few new button combinations to remember: pressing the top volume button and the sleep / wake button together takes a screenshot; holding the sleep button opens Siri; and you turn the phone off by holding either of the volume buttons and the sleep button for several seconds and then sliding to power down

And, of course, there’s the notch in the display — what Apple calls the “sensor housing.” It’s ugly, but it tends to fade away after a while in portrait mode. It’s definitely intrusive in landscape, though. It makes landscape in general pretty messy. Less ignorable are the bezels around the sides and bottom of the screen, which are actually quite large. Getting rid of almost everything tends to draw attention to what remains, and what remains here is basically a thick black border all the way around the screen, with that notch set into the top.

I personally think the iPhone 4 is the most beautiful phone of all time, and I’d say the iPhone X is in third place in the iPhone rankings after that phone and the original model. It’s a huge step up from the surfboard design we’ve been living with since the iPhone 6, but it definitely lacks the character of Apple’s finest work. And… it has that notch.

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