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

HPE CEO Meg Whitman decides to step down after her 6-year stint at the technology giant.

Charlene Vos

2017-11-07 09:38:00 Tuesday ET

HPE CEO Meg Whitman decides to step down after her 6-year stint at the technology giant.

HPE CEO Meg Whitman has run both eBay and Hewlett Packard within Fortune 500 and now has decided to step down after her 6-year stint at the technology giant

+See More

Federal Reserve proposes to revamp post-crisis rules for U.S. banks.

Joseph Corr

2019-04-19 12:35:00 Friday ET

Federal Reserve proposes to revamp post-crisis rules for U.S. banks.

Federal Reserve proposes to revamp post-crisis rules for U.S. banks. The current proposals would prescribe materially less strict requirements for community

+See More

Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe outlines the main economic priorities for the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan.

Laura Hermes

2019-07-13 07:17:00 Saturday ET

Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe outlines the main economic priorities for the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan.

Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe outlines the main economic priorities for the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan. First, Asian countries need to forge the key Re

+See More

Fed's new chairman Jerome Powell testifies before Congress for the first time.

Rose Prince

2018-02-27 09:35:00 Tuesday ET

Fed's new chairman Jerome Powell testifies before Congress for the first time.

Fed's new chairman Jerome Powell testifies before Congress for the first time. He vows to prevent price instability for U.S. consumers, firms, and finan

+See More

CBS and its special committee of independent directors have decided to sue the Redstone controlling shareholders.

Daisy Harvey

2018-05-09 08:31:00 Wednesday ET

CBS and its special committee of independent directors have decided to sue the Redstone controlling shareholders.

CBS and its special committee of independent directors have decided to sue the Redstone controlling shareholders because these directors might have breached

+See More

Ramit Sethi suggests that it is important to invest in long-term gains instead of paying attention to daily dips and trends.

John Fourier

2018-10-30 10:41:00 Tuesday ET

Ramit Sethi suggests that it is important to invest in long-term gains instead of paying attention to daily dips and trends.

Personal finance author Ramit Sethi suggests that it is important to invest in long-term gains instead of paying attention to daily dips and trends. It

+See More