Apple has decided to carry on selling its older iPhone models in German stores, as the company said on Thursday.
The announcement made by the company will resume sale of specific older models, which were banned in Germany last year, but this resumption will be coming on its strategy to use only Qualcomm Inc’s chips in those models, as the iPhone is facing global legal battle from the chip making giant.
The decision to only use Qualcomm chips in iPhones shipped to Germany was made on no choice basis, as the company has to stop usage of some chips from Intel Corp in order to comply with a patent infringement lawsuit against it in Germany, which was won by the Qualcomm in December last year, said Apple.
Qualcomm is the world’s biggest supplier of mobile phone chips and it had filed a lawsuit against Apple in Germany which claimed that some older iPhone 7 and iPhone 8 models are violating Qualcomm patents. Patent in questions were about envelope tracking, which is a feature on chip that allow mobile phones to consume less battery power while receiving and sending signals, and it was not the Intel, which in actual was providing that feature, but was Qorvo Inc, another supplier of Apple, whose chip was integrated with the Intel modem in older phones.
And the Qualcomm came out winning that lawsuit which restricted Apple to sale some of its iPhone models with Intel modem chip; resultantly Apple has to pull such devices from 15 of its retail and an online store in Germany.
Though, in its legal conflict with Apple, Qualcomm remained victorious with the banning of iPhones in Germany, but that victory was partial as ban was limited to the sales of older models of iPhone while Apple remained selling newer iPhones with Intel chips in the country.
“Intel’s modem products are not involved in this lawsuit and are not subject to this or any other injunction,” Steven Rodgers, Intel’s general counsel, said in a statement.
