Apple has finally conceded the fact that the company had no option other than Qualcomm for key components when the industry transitioned to 4G, Bloomberg reported.
Apple's director of cellular systems architecture Matthias Sauer made the admission on 18 January. This comes after the government charged Qualcomm with misusing its market dominance to force phone makers to pay an inflated price for its chipsets.
According to Sauer's testimony, Apple had also considered the likes of Ericsson, Broadcom and Intel as suppliers for devices but none could deliver to Apple's demands.
iPhone 7 in September 2016 was the first LTE-ready Apple device to have chips supplied by anyone other than Qualcomm.
Qualcomm has argued that its leadership in technology led customers to depend on it, not things like misusing its power in the market. It owns more than 120,000 patents with about 35 being added every day. The company argues that it should be compensated for losing its market share due to this as competitors have now caught up, the Bloomberg report added.
(With inputs from Bloomberg)
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