Court Ruling Upholds Guilty Verdict in Qualcomm Pricing Case
The EU’s continued crackdown on big tech has gone full speed ahead, and this time it’s Qualcomm who has been on the receiving end of the EU’s doubled-down implementation of policies regarding large corporations within the tech industry. As such, the EU’s second highest court has carried on with a verdict which earlier declared Qualcomm guilty of predatory pricing.
With that said though, this isn’t anything new – the case stems as far back as 2009, and involves Qualcomm’s contract with Icera, a British software company. It was discovered that Qualcomm sold chips at a much lesser cost, a practice which excluded competitors from potential deals. Qualcomm has since appealed several times, claiming that its deal with Icera accounted for just 0.7% of the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System market, a rather small amount.
Qualcomm is only one name in a long list of big tech companies that the EU has continued to investigate on grounds of legal violations and more. While the verdict remains, the court did reduce the fine from €242 million to €238.7 million, and Qualcomm can still appeal to the EU Court of Justice in the future.
Source: GSMArena