The Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg confirmed the legality of the antitrust fine imposed on the American semiconductor manufacturer Qualcomm, but slightly reduced its amount – from €242 million to €238.7 million.
The European Commission imposed the fine in 2019, saying that from 2009 to 2011, Qualcomm sold its processors at prices below cost. The activity, referred to as “predatory pricing,” targeted British phone software developer Icera, now part of Nvidia.
The chipsets specified in the case, designed to operate in third-generation cellular networks, according to Qualcomm, accounted for only 0.7% of the UMTS market, which means that the company was deprived of the opportunity to exclude competitors from the chipset market. The Court of Justice of the European Union “examined in detail all the arguments put forward by Qualcomm and rejected them in full, with the exception of the argument regarding the amount of the fine, which it considers partially justified.”
The American chipmaker can now appeal to the European Court of Justice, the highest court in the EU. Two years ago, Qualcomm managed to convince a court in Luxembourg to overturn an antitrust fine of €997 million issued in 2018, when the company was convicted of paying Apple several billion dollars from 2011 to 2016 so that only its chips could be used in iPhones and iPads. , not Intel products.