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| Qualcomm is losing the battle against European antitrust bodies |
Qualcomm clashed with European competition authorities on Thursday over the demand for the data after the European Court of Justice reiterated that regulators had a right to use it. The case fined the company $ 292 million.
The decision of the European Union Court of Justice (ECJ) in Luxembourg strengthened the role of the European Commission in other antitrust investigations.
The small dispute between Qualcomm and the European Commission has imposed two fines in the past three years, totaling 1.2 billion euros, for using its market power to defeat competitors such as Intel.
In the first case, the company was fined 242 million euros for abusing its dominant position in the LTE SIM card market, and in the second case, a fine of 997 million euros was imposed.
The European antitrust complaint dates back to 2017 when Qualcomm was asked to provide more information to accuse the company of offering negative rates between 2009 and 2011 to remove the UK company from Semi-Icera drivers, which was later acquired by Nvidia.
In July 2019, the European Commission imposed a fine of 242 million euros on Qualcomm for abusing its dominant position in the 3G chip market by selling under-priced chips to force rival Icera to stop operating.
Qualcomm sold a batch of three UMTS chipsets at a lower cost to Huawei and ZTE with the goal of eliminating Icera, its main competitor in the market.
Qualcomm said: The request was outside the scope of the investigation. Her case was referred to the Ordinary Court of the Second High Court of Justice in Europe, but she lost in 2019 and then appealed to the European Court of Justice (ECJ).
The court supports the European Antitrust Authority.
The judge said: Given the broad investigative powers that the committee has granted to the committee under Regulation 1/2003, the committee must decide whether certain information is required to shed light on violations of competition rules.
Qualcomm is the subject of Case Three, and the European Competition Agency is examining whether the company is behaving against competition by leveraging its market position for RF chips connected to 5G modem chips.