WSi reports: Qualcomm unit will help Chinese phone makers sell abroad

According to report in The Wall Street Journal, a dedicated unit by Qualcomm will help Chinese smartphone manufacturers sell their hardware overseas. The chipmaker recently settled a massiveantitrust investigation in China by paying a fine of $975 million.

The move is part of Qualcomm’s efforts to strengthen its relationships with manufacturers in China. A company executive told WSJ that the San Diego-based maker of the popular Snapdragon chipsets has set up a globalization office in Shenzhen, which will help local companies touch base with markets abroad.

As a result of the antitrust settlement, Qualcomm will reduce the royalties it collects from manufacturers in China and be more transparent about its local business ventures. The tech giant will also start a $150 million fund that will invest in local startups.

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Qualcomm cuts outlook for fiscal 2015, blames Samsung

Qualcomm has again cut its revenue forecast for fiscal 2015, with the company now expecting a revenue of between $25 billion and $27 billion, compared to $26.3 - $28 billion it was expecting earlier. The chipmaker has also cut its earnings outlook for the year.

The warning comes from the company's report on its fiscal second quarter, which saw a 45% decline in its year-on-year earnings.

"While we remain confident in the significant growth opportunities ahead, we are reducing our QCT outlook for fiscal 2015, primarily due to the increased impact of customer share shifts within the premium tier and a decline in our share at a large customer," said CEO Steve Mollenkopf.

No points for guessing that Mollenkopf was referring to Samsung, which ditched Qualcomm's Snapdragon 810 chipset in favor of its own Exynos 7420 for both new Galaxy models, the S6 and S6 Edge.

Mollenkopf also announced that the company will look at ways to cut costs. "In addition to our ongoing expense management initiatives, we have initiated a comprehensive review of our cost structure to identify opportunities to improve operating margins while at the same time extending our technology and product leadership positions," he said.

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Qualcomm may tap Samsung foundries for Snapdragon 820

Samsung has an advantage in chip making and it's starting to snowball – now even Qualcomm may switch to Samsung's foundries to manufacture the upcoming Snapdragon 820 chipset. The current 810 is built by TSMC (which also produced previous Snapdragons), but it has been underperforming.

Qualcomm rushed to add 64-bit capability to its chipsets, which led it to use the standard ARM Cortex cores instead of the next generation custom chips – those just weren’t ready. Still, Samsung is using the same Cortex-A53 and A57 in its Exynos chipset and it's getting better results, thanks to the 14nm manufacturing process compared to TSMC's 20nm.

Snapdragon 820 will mark the return to custom Qualcomm cores, sporting the 64-bit ARMv8 instruction set, those are dubbed Kryo and are expected to power flagships in 2016. Even if the company manages to make cooler-running cores than the ARM designs, it still wants the advantage of the smaller manufacturing process.

Qualcomm also wants back into Galaxy flagships – those sell tens of millions, but Samsung will need convincing to switch away from the Exynos, which reportedly saves on licensing fees. Exynos uses an external modem though, which is pricier than having it integrated into the chipset like Snapdragon designs.

Neither Samsung nor Qualcomm have officially confirmed the move yet, but this cant' be good news for TSMC. Apple will also turn to Samsung for the A9 chipset for the next-generation of iGadgets.

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Alcatel OneTouch Idol 3 goes on pre-order for $199.99

The 5.5-inch Alcatel OneTouch Idol 3 which was made official last month at MWC is now up for pre-order in the US. This is happening through Alcatel's own official store, which is powered by Amazon. You can pre-order the device unlocked and sans carrier contract for $199.99.

That price will however only be valid until April 20 at 11:59 PM PDT. From that point on, the amount you have to pay for the Idol 3 goes up to $249.99. The pre-ordered handsets are going to start shipping on May 21, which is also this model's official release date for the US.

The phone comes with a 5.5-inch 1080p touchscreen, Qualcomm's Snapdragon 615 SoC (with an octa-core CPU having four Cortex-A53 cores going to 1.5 GHz and another four capped at 1 GHz), 2GB of RAM, 16GB of expandable storage, 4G LTE, a 13 MP main camera, an 8 MP selfie shooter, and a 2,910 mAh battery. It runs Android 5.0 Lollipop.

The standout feature for the Idol 3 is the fact that it's reversible - meaning you can pick it up and talk even if its top side is down. This is enabled by the symmetrical design of its dual front-facing speakers.

LG G4 allegedly photographed, Snapdragon 808 inside

A benchmark revealed that the LG G4 won't use the flagship Snapdragon chipset, opting instead for the Snapdragon 808, which has a hexa-core processor – dropping two of the four power-hungry Cortex-A57 cores of the 810 chipset.

More evidence of that comes from a photo of a working device – reportedly the LG G4, though it's hard to confirm the identity of the device at that quality. The phone is shown running CPU-Z, which reports Snapdragon 808 with six CPU cores at and Adreno 418 GPU.

An alleged photo of CPU-Z detailing the LG G4's internals

The app claims 28nm build process, though the 808 is supposed to be built on the more power efficient 20nm. The accuracy of such hardware details is dubious when detected in software though. Never mind the "Krait 450" label either.

Huawei recently went all Cortex-A53 for its latest flagship, believing that less thermal throttling will make up for the difference in performance between the A53 and A57. Those A53s run at a higher clockspeed than the ones in the Snapdragon 808 though (2GHz-2.2GHz vs. 1.44GHz in the G4).

The early GFX Bench results show that Adreno 418 is an improvement over the Adreno 330 that powers the LG G3, but it puts it noticeably behind the Adreno 430 in the LG G Flex2. We'll get LG's thoughts on the matter on April 28.

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Samsung’s Chip Choice Is a Mixed Verdict for Qualcomm

Samsung’s Galaxy S6.

 

Jarrard Cole/The Wall Street Journal

Samsung Electronics 005930.SE 0.00% delivered a blow to Qualcomm QCOM -2.10%in one key choice of chips in its new Galaxy S6 smartphone. But the South Korean giant seems to be hedging its bets on another Qualcomm technology choice.

Chipworks, a consulting firm that disassembles and analyzes features in mobile devices, reported late Thursday that Samsung used an internally developed wireless modem in the Galaxy S6. Qualcomm had been expected to supply the modem–one of two critical chips in the handset–though Samsung had said earlier this year it would use its own processor chip over Qualcomm’s Snapdragon.

But Chipworks analyzed a Galaxy S6 that was designed for a particular carrier’s network, a person familiar with the situation said Friday. Models built for some other networks, this person said, would use Qualcomm modems, leaving the chip maker with a meaningful share of modems in Galaxy S6 units.

Qualcomm warned in early January that its financial results this year would be hurt as a major customer, which was not identified, had decided not to use the Snapdragon 810 chip in a flagship smartphone. Qualcomm didn’t use Samsung’s name but never disputed that it was referring to the South Korean company.

Handset makers can either buy one chip that handles both calculating and communications–like the Snapdragon–or separate chips for those functions. Qualcomm prefers the first approach, since it tends to get more money for multi-function products.

Apple has tended to  favor separate chips, using its own processors but typically turning to Qualcomm for the wireless modem. Samsung has used prior Snapdragon models but turned to its own Exynos processor this time. Samsung manufactures the chip using an advanced production process that the company says brings performance and power-savings benefits.

“Samsung has always mixed up their vendors,” says Patrick Moorhead, an analyst with Moor Insights & Strategy.

Samsung must consider factors such as keeping its chip factories running at capacity, Moorhead said, in addition to the product-design priorities. The company has a massive plant in Austin, Tex., that supplied Apple-designed processors for that company’s iPhones.

Apple switched from Samsung to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.TSM +1.98% to build chips for the iPhone 6. But Bloomberg this week reported that Apple will switch back to Samsung to supply chips for its next model.

Moorhead, meanwhile, said Samsung may switch back to Qualcomm for its flagship smartphones, once the chip maker comes up with a new version of its Snapdragon line that uses more original circuitry.

The Chipworks teardown revealed not only an Exynos chip and a Samsung modem, but several other kinds of Samsung chip including two processors for managing power, an image processor and a Wi-Fi chip. Samsung, the biggest maker of memory chips, also supplied two varieties of that technology in the Galaxy S6: NAND flash memory and dynamic random-access memory, Chipworks said.

Rumored Qualcomm Snapdragon 815 chipset doesn't exist

A couple of months ago we first heard a rumor talking about a purported Snapdragon 815 chipset from Qualcomm. This was supposed to carry ARM's big.LITTLE architecture, with an octa-core CPU, Adreno 450 GPU, LPDDR4 memory support, and a MDM9x55 built-in modem with Cat.10 LTE capabilities. The Snapdragon 815 was apparently going to be made using a 20nm process.

There's only one problem with all of the above, it turns out. It's all fiction. At least this is what Qualcomm itself says, through the voice of Jon Carvill, the company's Senior Director of Public Relations.

He spoke to Fudzilla and clearly stated that Qualcomm has no plans for a Snapdragon 815 SoC. In fact, the company's next top of the line mobile offering will be the Snapdragon 820, the successor to the Snapdragon 810.

The Snapdragon 820 is expected to sample in the latter part of this year, while devices powered by it should be out either at the end of 2015 or at the beginning of 2016 - that is, if there won't be any delays. In the mobile chipset industry delays are nothing out of the ordinary, though, keep that in mind.

The Snapdragon 820 will be built using a FinFET process, and it will be the first 64-bit SoC to come with a Qualcomm custom core, named Kyro. This will be based on ARMv8, but will be designed by Qualcomm. For comparison, note that the current king of Qualcomm chipsets, the Snapdragon 810, uses ARM-designed cores in a big.LITTLE configuration.

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