Displaying items by tag: Legal battle
EU fines Qualcomm over alleged antitrust violation
US chipmaking giant Qualcomm has been fined 242 million euros by the EU for an antitrust violation.
The fine is the second penalty imposed on the company by Brussels, the previous fine being 997 million euros back in 2018.
“Our investigation found that Qualcomm abused” its dominant position in the market between mid-2009 and mid-2011 by “engaging in predatory pricing,” read the statement issued by the EU.
According to the EU’s case, the chips in question are “key components so that mobile devices can connect to the internet” and that “Qualcomm sold these products at a price below cost to key customers with the intention of eliminating a competitor,” said EU antitrust commissioner Margrethe Vestager.
The EU also stated that Qualcomm sold chipsets to Huawei and ZTE, strategic customers which are Chinese tech giants, “with the intention of eliminating Icera, its main rival”.
Qualcomm said in a statement that it would appeal this decision as a means of exposing “the meritless nature” of it.
The EU fine, according to the chipmaking giant’s General Counsel, Don Rosenberg, is “unsupported by the law, economic principles or market facts, and we look forward to a reversal on appeal.”
Rosenberg added that the Chinese tech giants chose Qualcomm because “rival chipsets were technologically inferior”.
Qualcomm was also recently fined in Korea and Taiwan for antitrust concerns. In fact, the chipmaker finalized a two-year-long legal battle with Apple over royalties.
Trump has criticized Vestager’s cases against US tech giants such as Amazon, Google and Apple. In fact, Google was previously given 3 major fines from the European Commission amounting to a total of 8.25 billion euros.
