Qualcomm licensing + more

3 minutes estimated reading time

Judge Koh: Qualcomms Licensing Practices Destroyed Competition, Harmed Consumers – Disruptive Competition Project – as best as I can understand this, the analogy of Intel and AMD comes to mind in terms of the kind of case Judge Koh has described her thoughts. But the case is different which is what makes this a bit odd. Especially odd given that there is so much more to criticise on Qualcomms licensing practices. In particular the coercive cross licensing conditions that are part of Qualcomms licensing practices. More on Qualcomm here.

Blockchain officially confirmed as slower and more expensive | FT Alphaville – Oracle et al should be showing this to clients

Field Notes: Highlights from Huawei – Andreessen HorowitzMy family uses Apple’s phones; Apple’s ecology is very good. When family members travel abroad, I would gift them an Apple computer. One can’t narrow-mindedly believe that if you love Huawei then you must only use Huawei mobile phones. – Chairman Ren says that when he and his family are looking for premium smartphones they use an Apple

TV makers to reduce display panel stocks, says IHS Markit | EE Times – expectation of economic contraction

China’s robot censors crank up as Tiananmen anniversary nears – Reuters – there’s a definite tension between western media fake news and Chinese censorship coverage. Not that there’s moral equivalence, but a lack of awareness about the thread connecting the subject areas

Dunkin Donuts Refuses to Get Woke: ‘We Are Not Starbucks’ – Sometimes the brand purpose is what it says on the tin

Uber introduces quiet mode for premium customers | Canvas8 – you need an app to mediate a simple request FFS

Global Competition and Brexit | American Political Science Review | Cambridge Core – highlights the importance of globalisation in driving populism in post-industrial economies. This is probably why Trump and American politicians are in the trade cold war for the long haul and likely to see similar in the EU – its only a matter of time

Nigel Farage seeks to establish a viable far right UK party — Quartz – If you don’t read anything else about Brexit and think that the current populism will peak and subside with Brexit ponder “Anyone who is not the governing party is going to benefit from the governing party inflicting food shortages. Medicine shortages will be very immediate. All of which he will be able to blame on Brexit not being done properly, and at least some people will be receptive to that message.”

China showing signs similar to Japanese housing bubble that led to its ‘lost decades’, expert warns | South China Morning Post – I’ve heard this more than once, though there are two things to consider: 1/ the Bank of Japan was much more hands off than Chinese monetary policy 2/ China has opacity of data and more levers to pull in its favour in property market. Bigger issue is corporate and government debt

Exclusive: Behind Grindr’s doomed hookup in China, a data misstep and scramble to make up – ReutersWhile it is known that data privacy concerns prompted the crackdown on Kunlun, interviews with over a dozen sources with knowledge of Grindr’s operations, including the former employees, for the first time shed light on what the company actually did to draw U.S. ire and how it then tried to save its deal. Reuters found no evidence that the app’s database was misused. Nevertheless, the decision to give its engineers in Beijing access to Grindr’s database proved to be a misstep for Kunlun, one of the largest Chinese mobile gaming companies

Mediatel: Newsline: Sex sells, right?So, with that in mind, can sex still have the selling power for advertisers that it once did? 
“Ultimately? Yes and no,” Jem Fawcus, CEO of brand strategy partner and insight agency Firefish, tells Mediatel. 
“Every well observed element of human life can sell if used in the right way. But if used just for titillation and as an attention grabber, absolutely not.”