Comment by ChuckMcM

13 years ago

I always felt they could take what ever the damages award ended up to be, divide that by the volume of chips they send Apple, And then raise the price per chip that much.

Don't not ship, just make sure that the patent damages don't cause any hit to the bottom line.

6 comments

ChuckMcM

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greedo  13 years ago

I'm pretty sure that Apple would have negotiated prices into the chip contract. After all, this isn't the US signing a cost plus defense contract.

dagw  13 years ago

You're assuming the head of the chips department gives a fuck about what is happening to the mobile department. If the CEO where to step in and try to force the chips the people to screw with one of their best customer out of spite I'm pretty sure that wouldn't go down to well.

bsullivan01  13 years ago

I always felt they could take what ever the damages award ended up to be

Like the other poster said, prices are almost certainly fixed--or else they'd face extortion as iPhone got more popular--but does anyone even dare calculate how much damages (including punitive) you have to pay Apple that's shipping some 100 million iPhones a year? Samsung and every corporation on earth would be bankrupt, not to mention that their stock would crash the minute word got out, almost certainly face DOJ, EU anti-trust and other issues etc etc.

Samsung singed the contract and they have to abide by it or else...

Not to start a war or anything, but Samsung decided to compete with their customer, not the other way around. Do we already need a reminder of pre-iPhone phones?

  • ChuckMcM  13 years ago

    At NetApp, when I had visibility into the hardware building side of things we negotiated with Intel (our CPU supplier) on prices pretty much every year, and every time we added a new SKU to the mix. And when it became clear we were going to build systems with AMD parts those negotiations got a lot testier. And I don't doubt for a femptosecond that NetApp ended up having to pay more for their mid-range chips while they were shipping AMD chips in their high end filer.

    I have no idea what goes on in the Samsung Microelectronics board room when Apple comes to call, but I would be astonished if the patent suits haven't changed Samsung's willingness to negotiate on price, and the base price they negotiate.

    • wmf  13 years ago

      I thought Intel's prices went down whenever you mentioned AMD (or now IBM). Do the prices go back up if you actually buy from AMD?

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