E.U. antitrust regulators impose a fine on Qualcomm for advancing its exclusive microchip deal with Apple.

Fiona Sydney

2018-01-17 05:30:00 Wed ET

European Union antitrust regulators impose a fine on Qualcomm for advancing its key exclusive microchip deal with Apple to block out rivals such as Intel and TSMC. The European Commission takes into account Qualcomm's multi-year dominance in the LTE microchip market with rapid mobile broadband connections. In recent times, Qualcomm attempts to force Apple and its Asian upstream suppliers to use its trademark microchips exclusively in return for lower licensing fees.

Qualcomm can thus unfairly cut out intense competition in the LTE chipset market. In fact, Qualcomm pays billions of U.S. dollars to Apple such that it would not buy from other microchip producers.

These payments represent not just price reductions, but the primary condition that Apple would exclusively use Qualcomm's baseband chipsets in all its iPhones and iPads. Several other smart phone rivals such as Lenovo, OPPO, Vivo, and Xiaomi express an active interest in buying $2 billion Qualcomm chipsets over 3 years. No microchip rivals would be able to effectively challenge Qualcomm in this particular market regardless of product quality improvements.

The European Commission thus has to penalize Qualcomm for its anti-competitive market behavior. This E.U. regulatory decision has deep economic implications for Apple and other mobile device suppliers and manufacturers worldwide.

 


If any of our AYA Analytica financial health memos (FHM), blog posts, ebooks, newsletters, and notifications etc, or any other form of online content curation, involves potential copyright concerns, please feel free to contact us at service@ayafintech.network so that we can remove relevant content in response to any such request within a reasonable time frame.

Blog+More

U.S. economic inequality increases to pre-Great-Depression levels.

Fiona Sydney

2019-02-17 14:40:00 Sunday ET

U.S. economic inequality increases to pre-Great-Depression levels.

U.S. economic inequality increases to pre-Great-Depression levels. U.C. Berkeley economics professor Gabriel Zucman empirically finds that the top 0.1% rich

+See More

The Chinese Xi administration may choose to leverage its state dominance of rare-earth elements to better balance the current Sino-U.S. trade war.

Dan Rochefort

2019-06-13 10:26:00 Thursday ET

The Chinese Xi administration may choose to leverage its state dominance of rare-earth elements to better balance the current Sino-U.S. trade war.

The Chinese Xi administration may choose to leverage its state dominance of rare-earth elements to better balance the current Sino-U.S. trade war. In recent

+See More

Federal Reserve delivers a second interest rate hike to 1.75%-2% and then expects more rate increases in late-2018.

Charlene Vos

2018-06-08 13:35:00 Friday ET

Federal Reserve delivers a second interest rate hike to 1.75%-2% and then expects more rate increases in late-2018.

The Federal Reserve delivers a second interest rate hike to 1.75%-2% and then expects subsequent rate increases in September and December 2018 to dampen inf

+See More

Corporate cash management

Jacob Miramar

2022-03-25 09:34:00 Friday ET

Corporate cash management

Corporate cash management The empirical corporate finance literature suggests four primary motives for firms to hold cash. These motives include the tra

+See More

The SEC sues Elon Musk for his August 2018 tweet that he has secured external finance to convert Tesla into a private company.

Amy Hamilton

2018-09-29 12:39:00 Saturday ET

The SEC sues Elon Musk for his August 2018 tweet that he has secured external finance to convert Tesla into a private company.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (S.E.C.) sues Elon Musk for his August 2018 tweet that he has secured external finance to convert Tesla into a privat

+See More

AYA finbuzz podcast offers fresh insights into the latest stock market topics, economic trends, and personal finance inspirations as of November 2019.

Daphne Basel

2019-11-26 11:30:00 Tuesday ET

AYA finbuzz podcast offers fresh insights into the latest stock market topics, economic trends, and personal finance inspirations as of November 2019.

AYA Analytica finbuzz podcast channel on YouTube November 2019 In this podcast, we discuss several topical issues as of November 2019: (1) The Trump adm

+See More