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takyon writes:

Qualcomm could face as much as a $2.7 billion fine (10% of its 2014 global revenues) if found guilty of new European Commission antitrust charges:

The European Commission (EC) [has] charged Qualcomm with violating antitrust rules in the European Union (EU). The EC said that Qualcomm abused its powers to thwart rivals by paying OEM customers to buy chips exclusively from the company.

Earlier this year, Qualcomm was found guilty with violating antitrust laws in China as well, and it was forced to pay a record $1 billion fine. China accused Qualcomm of maintaining royalty rates for 3G and 4G technologies that were too high. The Chinese government demanded that alongside the $1 billion fine, Qualcomm would also have to lower its license prices for its patents by a third.

Qualcomm is also being investigated for its licensing prices in Japan and South Korea. The EU also investigated Qualcomm for unreasonably high licensing prices in 2009, but it ended up dropping that investigation.

This time, the antitrust accusations in the EU are different and much more damning for the company. The EU's competition enforcer said that Qualcomm may have illegally paid a major customer for exclusively using its chips. It also said that Qualcomm sold chipsets below cost to drive competitors out of the market, which is a strategy that is called "predatory pricing."

The predatory pricing accusation came from Icera, a maker of software-defined radio technology. The company was later acquired by Nvidia but could never successfully break into the modem market, which is why Nvidia later decided to sell it.

Previously: EU Investigates Qualcomm For Antitrust Activities

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