EU court confirms Qualcomm’s antitrust fine, with minor reduction

Europe’s second-top court largely confirmed on Wednesday an EU antitrust fine imposed on US chipmaker Qualcomm, revising it down slightly to 238.7 million euros ($265.5 million) from an initial 242 million euros.

The European Commission imposed the fine in 2019, saying that Qualcomm sold its chipsets below cost between 2009 and 2011, in a practice known as predatory pricing, to thwart British phone software maker Icera, which is now part of Nvidia Corp.

Qualcomm had argued that the 3G baseband chipsets singled out in the case accounted for just 0.7 per cent of the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) market and so it was not possible for it to exclude rivals from the chipset market.

The Court made “a detailed examination of all the pleas put forward by Qualcomm, rejecting them all in their entirety, with the exception of a plea concerning the calculation of the amount of the fine, which it finds to be well founded in part,” the Luxembourg-based General Court said.

Qualcomm can appeal on points of law to the EU Court of Justice, Europe’s highest.

The chipmaker did not immediately reply to an emailed Reuters request for comment.

The company convinced the same court two years ago to throw out a 997 million euro antitrust fine handed down in 2018 for paying billions of dollars to Apple from 2011 to 2016 to use only its chips in all its iPhones and iPads in order to block out rivals such as Intel Corp.
The EU watchdog subsequently declined to appeal the judgment.

The case is T-671/19 Qualcomm v Commission (Qualcomm – predatory pricing).

($1 = 0.8990 euros)