Antitrust regulators of the European Union has imposed on Qualcomm fine in the amount of 997 million euros, according to 9to5mac.
The size of the penalty will amount to 4.9% of Qualcomm’s turnover in 2017. According to a press release of the Commission, Qualcomm has paid “billions of dollars” to Apple only used its mobile chips in its iPhone and iPad. European Commissioner for competition, Margrethe Vestager said that thanks to this deal, Qualcomm has become the largest manufacturer of chips.
Antitrust regulators from 2015 studied the company superiority in the market of modem chips. In their opinion, the dominant position of the chip maker received regardless of the quality of competitors ‘ products.
The EU promised to put all 130 pages of research results in open access in the coming weeks.
This penalty will be quite noticeable for Qualcomm. In 2017, the total profit of the company amounted to only 20 billion dollars. The European Commission decision can be appealed, so the penalty amount may be reduced.
The relationship between the two technology companies deteriorated after January 2017. It was then that Apple has sued Qualcomm, alleging that the chip maker had illegally taken away from the company a billion dollars. The essence of the claim — Qualcomm has sought compensation for the use of technology, which in Cupertino have nothing. So Apple is going to use their devices in 2018 LTE modems from Intel and MediaTek.
Earlier, Qualcomm had accused Apple of patent infringement, theft of computer code, attempted to ban the import of iPhone. And all this happened after Apple decided to completely abandon the products of Qualcomm.
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