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posted by martyb on Thursday December 10 2015, @08:20PM   Printer-friendly
from the paying-the-price dept.

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


Original Submission

Related Stories

EU Investigates Qualcomm For Antitrust Activities 14 comments

Qualcomm is under investigation by the European Union's antitrust authority, which suspects the company of abusing its dominant position in the market for 3G and 4G chipsets used in smartphones and tablets.

The European Commission has initiated proceedings against Qualcomm in two investigations, it said Thursday. The first concerns whether Qualcomm breached EU antitrust rules by offering financial incentives to phone manufacturers on condition that they buy chipsets exclusively, or mostly, from the company; the second, whether Qualcomm engaged in predatory pricing, selling below cost to force competitors out of the market.

Mobile processors and baseband chipsets, which handle the communications protocols used in wireless networks, form a significant proportion of the cost of a mobile phone and, at least at the low end of the market, margins are getting thinner, leaving phonemakers more vulnerable to pricing pressures from their suppliers.

The EU Commissioner in charge of competition policy, Margrethe Vestager, said "We are launching these investigations because we want to be sure that high tech suppliers can compete on the merits of their products. Many customers use electronic devices such as a mobile phone or a tablet and we want to ensure that they ultimately get value for money. Effective competition is the best way to stimulate innovation."

Qualcomm's business practices have come under antitrust authorities' scrutiny before. Earlier this year, Chinese regulators fined Qualcomm $975 million for overcharging device makers there.

[...]

Qualcomm said it had been notified that the Commission had initiated proceedings against it in the two ongoing investigations. It will continue to cooperate with the Commission, but believes the concerns are without merit, it said.

More coverage of this story can be found at The Register and ITWorld.


Original Submission

U.S. Federal Trade Commission Sues Qualcomm for Anti-Competitive Practices 7 comments

The U.S. FTC is going after Qualcomm:

The Federal Trade Commission filed a complaint in federal district court charging Qualcomm Inc. with using anticompetitive tactics to maintain its monopoly in the supply of a key semiconductor device used in cell phones and other consumer products. Qualcomm is the world's dominant supplier of baseband processors – devices that manage cellular communications in mobile products. The FTC alleges that Qualcomm has used its dominant position as a supplier of certain baseband processors to impose onerous and anticompetitive supply and licensing terms on cell phone manufacturers and to weaken competitors.

[...] According to the complaint, by threatening to disrupt cell phone manufacturers' supply of baseband processors, Qualcomm obtains elevated royalties and other license terms for its standard-essential patents that manufacturers would otherwise reject. These royalties amount to a tax on the manufacturers' use of baseband processors manufactured by Qualcomm's competitors, a tax that excludes these competitors and harms competition. Increased costs imposed by this tax are passed on to consumers, the complaint alleges. By excluding competitors, Qualcomm impedes innovation that would offer significant consumer benefits, including those that foster the increased interconnectivity of consumer products, vehicles, buildings, and other items commonly referred to as the Internet of Things.

Get in line:

EU Investigates Qualcomm For Antitrust Activities
Qualcomm Faces EU Antitrust Charges Over "Predatory Pricing"
Qualcomm Fined $853 Million by South Korea for Antitrust Violations

Also at Bloomberg and The Verge.


Original Submission

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  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday December 11 2015, @01:13AM

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Friday December 11 2015, @01:13AM (#274738) Homepage

    This is what happens when Whites run a company. They lie their asses off and hire foreign slave-labor and work them like dogs, then they behave like mob goons and try to buy everybody off illegally like Al Capone did. Al Capone, of course, was White and as we all know Whites are untrustworthy and lack a sense of family and have no moral foundation.

    It's why Microsoft got rid of Steve Ballmer (he is a White) and replaced him with a non-White.

    Being crooked only takes one so far in this world, and the crooked also happen to be Whites.