EC starts anti-trust action against Qualcomm

The EC has filed antitrust charges against Qualcomm saying that the company paid customers to take chips exclusively from itself and sold chips below cost to force out competitors.

By David Manners - Electronics Weekly, Dec. 09, 2015 – 

"I am concerned that Qualcomm's actions may have pushed out competitors or prevented them from competing," says EC Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, "we need to make sure that European consumers continue to benefit from competition and innovation in an area which is at the heart of today's economy."

The UK chip company Icera, later sold to Nvidia, complained to the EC five years ago that Qualcomm was offering financial inducements to customers to get them to take Qualcomm chips.

In July 2015, the Commission opened two formal antitrust investigations to assess concerns that Qualcomm may have abused a dominant position in the area of baseband chipsets through two separate conducts.

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