From the legal battle between Apple and Qualcomm we learn today that quite a lot of money would have been paid for each modem included in the iPhone terminals sold worldwide. More precisely, according to today's information, the Apple company would have paid 40 dollars for each modem bought from Qualcomm for implementation in the iPhone.
The amount is very high for such a component, but it includes not only the chip itself, but also the licensing fees associated with its purchase. With over 200 million iPhone terminals sold annually, we can conclude that Apple paid at least 5 billion dollars to Qualcomm in 2015, also assuming that the price is lower for older terminals.
According to the information that has appeared so far, Apple paid certain sums of money to Qualcomm for the purchase of modems, but received back a part in the form of discounts on purchases. For 2016, Qualcomm refused to return 1 billion dollars to the Apple company, and now a long legal battle in several countries will have to determine who is right.
If Apple was paying such large sums for components that cost a maximum of a quarter, then it is understandable why it sued Qualcomm and accuses it of blackmail. Of course, we will not know the reality in the near future, so it remains to be seen what other information will appear from the processes that are currently underway in various courts.
"So, if Qualcomm sold its baseband processors at approx. $20 per unit and collected or demanded royalties from Apple amounting to more or less the same amount, which would correspond to $40 per iPhone (or cellular iPad). Since 2015, annual iPhone sales have been north of 200 million units. If one multiplied that number with the $40 hypothesis, that would be a total (even before adding cellular iPads) of $8 billion a year, or roughly a third of Qualcomm's revenues."
