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This is a recipe for disaster. Arduino is great for education/tinkering. Qualcomm won't sell you anything even if you are ready to commit to buying 1000s. I tri

by magtux 1y ago

This is a recipe for disaster. Arduino is great for education/tinkering. Qualcomm won't sell you anything even if you are ready to commit to buying 1000s. I tried to source some Qualcomm chips for a startup @ 10k qty and was told there would be no information or support. Qualcomm can have a much bigger market if they simply open up some product lines for distribution like MediaTek do. China has a way more vibrant, innovative hardware industry simply because you can source everything made by Chinese firms.

ACCount37 1y ago
10k? Sorry, pal! We're in QualcommLand, and you need to be at least 100k units tall to ride this ride! But if you are a small developer, there are options for you! Have you tried to: eat shit? And die? So that you don't insult our PRECIOUS FUCKING TIME by IMPLYING that a MERE 10K would be ENOUGH for THE GREAT QUALCOMM to ACTUALLY CARE? The optimist in me wants to believe that this acquisition is a sign of Qualcomm actually trying to be better than that. But realistically? Yeah no. It's Qualcomm. They wouldn't have let it get this bad if they ever cared.
- nrclark 1y ago
  afaik, Raspberry Pis move around 7M units annually. Based on their first announced product (https://www.arduino.cc/product-uno-q https://www.arduino.cc/product-uno-q), I think Qualcomm is trying to get into that space, and they bought Arduino for the brand name. You're right that Qualcomm isn't in the business of small business. But maybe they expect that the market is big enough that it's worth their while to pay a subsidiary (Arduino) to do it.
joezydeco 1y ago
Arduino is great for education/tinkering Arduino has been trying out a new "pro" line for about a year now, making PLC-level devices to be used in automation but hopefully attracting developers by letting them use the same family of tools as the educational line. https://store-usa.arduino.cc/collections/pro-family https://store-usa.arduino.cc/collections/pro-family
Neywiny 1y ago
Yep. Same here but dramatically lower quantities. Was told basically we'd have to pay for a partner's support. Not that I'm expecting better from Arduino, but the community makes up for it. You Google "dragonwing stackoverflow" and there are 604 results, but even the first few aren't remotely relevant. "Atmega328p stackoverflow" is over 14k and relevant. Arduino is 52 million. It's a nonstarter
Moral_ 1y ago
This is the exact reason why they bought Arduino... So now startups have a way to buy say 1,000 devices for prototyping. Qualcomm gets used to supporting smaller developers/startups/tinkerers and will hopefully push different types of chips into the Arduino product lines.
- aleph_minus_one 1y ago
  > This is the exact reason why they bought Arduino... So now startups have a way to buy say 1,000 devices for prototyping. Qualcomm gets used to supporting smaller developers/startups/tinkerers For this, Qualcomm does not have to buy Arduino for a big amount of money: Qualcomm could simply offer this option on their own and save the acquisition cost. Addendum: For the acquisition cost, Qualcomm could do a lot of marketing of their offering towards makers.
  - LeifCarrotson 1y ago
    > Qualcomm could simply offer this option on their own and save the acquisition cost. No they can't. That's like suggesting "the aircraft carrier could simply turn around." The cheap and simple way for a multi-billion-dollar secretive semiconductor manufacturing behemoth that doesn't know how to write a contract for less than a million dollars or to publish documents for the public is not to just change that. It's to write a contract for millions of dollars to buy someone else that can already do that.
    - warmwaffles 1y ago
      > the aircraft carrier could simply turn around. Pretty sure it can turn 180 degrees fairly quickly.
    - ndnsnddn 1y ago
      What a strange analogy O_o aircraft carriers (and all warships for that manner) well known for being exceptionally nimble for such huge craft Evasive maneuvers are a thing
    - mrguyorama 1y ago
cosmicgadget 1y ago
From the presser: > Entrepreneurs, businesses, tech professionals, students, educators, and hobbyists will be empowered to rapidly prototype and test new solutions, with a clear path to commercialization supported by Qualcomm Technologies’ advanced technologies and extensive partner ecosystem. At the least the official line is to remedy this situation. Could be embrace/extend/extinguish but tech companies spend all kinds of money on getting students and smaller businesses into their monolithic ecosystems. The data center AI race was won by nvidia, embedded AI might still be up for grabs and it helps to have developer adoption.
jovial_cavalier 1y ago
I had the same knee-jerk reaction, but the optimist in me wants to say "isn't that the point of the acquisition?" Another comment linked to the Uno Q, which looks like a Qualcomm dev kit by Arduino. Perhaps Qualcomm is trying to get better at exactly the kind of thing you're talking about.
bangaladore 1y ago
Yeah, I was going to say this is like the worst-case scenario for the average user. One of the benefits of the main Arduino line is it was very simple to convert to your own design. Companies like Broadcom and Qualcomm won't sell (many of) their chips on normal distributer sites. Same reason why Raspberry PIs kind of suck in my opinion. Great you've come up with a neat thing you want to build with it; you are forced to utilize either their compute modules which may not be sufficient for your task, or might be out of stock, or XYZ.
hart_russell 1y ago
Yet another example of how corporate consolidation in America is hurting the consumer. FTC needs Lina Khan back to break up the oligopolies.
beembeem 1y ago
s/1000/10,000,000/

by magtux 1y ago

ACCount37 1y ago

10k? Sorry, pal! We're in QualcommLand, and you need to be at least 100k units tall to ride this ride! But if you are a small developer, there are options for you! Have you tried to: eat shit? And die? So that you don't insult our PRECIOUS FUCKING TIME by IMPLYING that a MERE 10K would be ENOUGH for THE GREAT QUALCOMM to ACTUALLY CARE? The optimist in me wants to believe that this acquisition is a sign of Qualcomm actually trying to be better than that. But realistically? Yeah no. It's Qualcomm. They wouldn't have let it get this bad if they ever cared.

nrclark 1y ago
afaik, Raspberry Pis move around 7M units annually. Based on their first announced product (https://www.arduino.cc/product-uno-q https://www.arduino.cc/product-uno-q), I think Qualcomm is trying to get into that space, and they bought Arduino for the brand name. You're right that Qualcomm isn't in the business of small business. But maybe they expect that the market is big enough that it's worth their while to pay a subsidiary (Arduino) to do it.

joezydeco 1y ago

Arduino is great for education/tinkering Arduino has been trying out a new "pro" line for about a year now, making PLC-level devices to be used in automation but hopefully attracting developers by letting them use the same family of tools as the educational line. https://store-usa.arduino.cc/collections/pro-family https://store-usa.arduino.cc/collections/pro-family

Neywiny 1y ago

Yep. Same here but dramatically lower quantities. Was told basically we'd have to pay for a partner's support. Not that I'm expecting better from Arduino, but the community makes up for it. You Google "dragonwing stackoverflow" and there are 604 results, but even the first few aren't remotely relevant. "Atmega328p stackoverflow" is over 14k and relevant. Arduino is 52 million. It's a nonstarter

Moral_ 1y ago

This is the exact reason why they bought Arduino... So now startups have a way to buy say 1,000 devices for prototyping. Qualcomm gets used to supporting smaller developers/startups/tinkerers and will hopefully push different types of chips into the Arduino product lines.

aleph_minus_one 1y ago
> This is the exact reason why they bought Arduino... So now startups have a way to buy say 1,000 devices for prototyping. Qualcomm gets used to supporting smaller developers/startups/tinkerers For this, Qualcomm does not have to buy Arduino for a big amount of money: Qualcomm could simply offer this option on their own and save the acquisition cost. Addendum: For the acquisition cost, Qualcomm could do a lot of marketing of their offering towards makers.
- LeifCarrotson 1y ago
  > Qualcomm could simply offer this option on their own and save the acquisition cost. No they can't. That's like suggesting "the aircraft carrier could simply turn around." The cheap and simple way for a multi-billion-dollar secretive semiconductor manufacturing behemoth that doesn't know how to write a contract for less than a million dollars or to publish documents for the public is not to just change that. It's to write a contract for millions of dollars to buy someone else that can already do that.
  - warmwaffles 1y ago
    > the aircraft carrier could simply turn around. Pretty sure it can turn 180 degrees fairly quickly.
  - ndnsnddn 1y ago
    What a strange analogy O_o aircraft carriers (and all warships for that manner) well known for being exceptionally nimble for such huge craft Evasive maneuvers are a thing
  - mrguyorama 1y ago

cosmicgadget 1y ago

From the presser: > Entrepreneurs, businesses, tech professionals, students, educators, and hobbyists will be empowered to rapidly prototype and test new solutions, with a clear path to commercialization supported by Qualcomm Technologies’ advanced technologies and extensive partner ecosystem. At the least the official line is to remedy this situation. Could be embrace/extend/extinguish but tech companies spend all kinds of money on getting students and smaller businesses into their monolithic ecosystems. The data center AI race was won by nvidia, embedded AI might still be up for grabs and it helps to have developer adoption.

jovial_cavalier 1y ago

I had the same knee-jerk reaction, but the optimist in me wants to say "isn't that the point of the acquisition?" Another comment linked to the Uno Q, which looks like a Qualcomm dev kit by Arduino. Perhaps Qualcomm is trying to get better at exactly the kind of thing you're talking about.

bangaladore 1y ago

Yeah, I was going to say this is like the worst-case scenario for the average user. One of the benefits of the main Arduino line is it was very simple to convert to your own design. Companies like Broadcom and Qualcomm won't sell (many of) their chips on normal distributer sites. Same reason why Raspberry PIs kind of suck in my opinion. Great you've come up with a neat thing you want to build with it; you are forced to utilize either their compute modules which may not be sufficient for your task, or might be out of stock, or XYZ.

hart_russell 1y ago

Yet another example of how corporate consolidation in America is hurting the consumer. FTC needs Lina Khan back to break up the oligopolies.

beembeem 1y ago

s/1000/10,000,000/