2018-01-17 05:30:00 Wed ET
technology antitrust competition bilateral trade free trade fair trade trade agreement trade surplus trade deficit multilateralism neoliberalism world trade organization regulation public utility current account compliance
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.
2019-08-31 14:39:00 Saturday ET

AYA Analytica finbuzz podcast channel on YouTube August 2019 In this podcast, we discuss several topical issues as of August 2019: (1) Warren B
2020-04-24 11:33:00 Friday ET

Disruptive innovations tend to contribute to business success in new blue-ocean markets after iterative continuous improvements. Clayton Christensen and
2019-11-17 14:43:00 Sunday ET

New computer algorithms and passive mutual fund managers run the stock market. Morningstar suggests that the total dollar amount of passive equity assets re
2017-07-13 08:35:00 Thursday ET

President Donald Trump has announced that a major Apple iPhone upstream supplier, Foxconn Technology Group (aka Hon Hai Precision Group), will invest $10 bi
2020-07-26 15:29:00 Sunday ET

Firms and customers create value and wealth together by joining the continual flow of small batches of lean production to the lean consumption of cost-effec
2025-01-22 08:35:08 Wednesday ET

President Donald Trump blames China for the long prevalent U.S. trade deficits and several other social and economic deficiencies. In recent years, Pres