Price dumping

EU court confirms antitrust fine against Qualcomm

Qualcomm had forced a competitor out of the market through price dumping.

(Bild: Dominik Erlinger)

The Court of First Instance of the European Union (CFI) in Luxembourg has largely confirmed a cartel fine of around 240 million euros against the US chip manufacturer Qualcomm. Qualcomm had claimed several alleged errors by the Commission, but was largely unsuccessful according to a ruling on Wednesday.

Following a complaint by British competitor Icera, the EU Commission imposed a fine of 242 million euros on Qualcomm in 2019. It accused the chip manufacturer of having granted large customers such as the Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE prices below the manufacturing costs between 2009 and 2011 in order to oust its competitor Icera from the market for so-called baseband chipsets. These chips are used by mobile devices for data transmission.

The British manufacturer was taken over by the US company Nvidia in 2011. Nvidia continued the proceedings for Icera, but wound up its baseband division in 2015. The Commission is convinced that this proves the success of the predatory strategy.

Judgment confirmed, fine reduced
The EGC has now confirmed that the Commission correctly determined the relevant market for these chips using an admissible method. The authority had also correctly determined the manufacturing costs. And finally, it had also provided sufficient evidence to show that Qualcomm had sought to engage in predatory competition. Whether the low prices actually had a predatory effect was irrelevant.

It was only in the calculation of the cartel fine that the EU Commission had deviated from the usual method without justification. The EGC therefore reduced the fine slightly to 238.7 million euros. Qualcomm can still appeal against this at the European Court of Justice.