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Taiwan and EU say Qualcomm cheated.
Qualcomm Inc. ’s long-running antitrust problems widened Tuesday, as European regulators leveled charges against the chip maker and a new investigation emerged in Taiwan.
The European Commission, the EU’s top antitrust authority, said Tuesday it had charged Qualcomm with illegally paying a major customer to exclusively use its chips and selling chips below cost to force a competitor, Icera Inc., out of the market.
If the charges are confirmed, Qualcomm could face fines of up to 10% of its global annual revenue for each charge and be forced to change its business practices. Its revenue totaled $25 billion in fiscal 2015.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/eu-imposes-formal-antitrust-charges-on-qualcomm-1449572986
Comments
I would make them pay 5% of their annual revenue to their competitor for 10 years. In addition to standard 10% fine.
AN' DERE AIN'T NO SUCH FING AS ENUFF DAKKA, YA GROT! Enuff'z more than ya got an' less than too much an' there ain't no such fing as too much dakka. Say dere is, and me Squiggoff'z eatin' tonight!
We are born of the blood. Made men by the blood. Undone by the blood. Our eyes are yet to open. FEAR THE OLD BLOOD.
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They have also went after other US companies like Microsoft for installing Internet Explorer on Windows OSes. Let Europe have a technology drought with this commission robbing the profits.
The EU has rules, and the EU Companies are expected to follow those rules, which by the way it gives us a big handicap over foreign products (believe it or not EU businesses are the first ones to suffer the EU strict rules and silly regulations).
Did you know you can't sell Bananas that are too bendy?
I bet you don't have to deal with this sort of BS over there.
You want to operate in the EU market? Stick with the rules, we can debate if they are right or wrong, or plainly stupid, but that's another issue.
This is not the Far West where everything goes.
I don't follow this well enough nowadays (or even claim to know the legal functions), but at first glance this seems suspect. Though a tale woven out of fact or truth doesn't mean foul play didn't occur in other sectors. If there are laws where you operate, they must be adhered to. It's like China businesses complaining they get charged for human rights laws and how they can't bribe the government to get away with things on foreign soil.
Global revenue is absurdly outrageous, though. They should only have the "right" to business conducted on their soil (though they can go for whatever they want, but there's also consequences for obscene charges) and them being so gun-ho about it makes me wonder about the validity of what I quoted above. It's up to each individual sector they operate in to recognize wrong doing and then charge them for their own territories if foul play is proven in accordance to the laws of each section operated within.
To take global revenue potentially affects all regions and one group of people should not have the authority to do that.
It's the same argument.
Europe should be far more aggressive, considering US dominance in the European tech market (google, microsoft, apple, intel, amd, nvidia, qualcomm).
Unemployment is sky high in Europe, poverty is at an all time high. I would make sure EU companies are given every chance they deserve to get some of those people jobs.
They should be more like China, and demand their own brands are given fair chances. China, Japan and South Korea have all dragged Qualcomm to court and fined them for skirting the law, Europe has not.
Europe has both the skill and knowledge to build their own tech sector, US companies pay EU tech labs to do the research, but Europe needs to be far more aggressive to protect their own companies.
Qualcomm's competitors aren't even in the EU. They are in Taiwan and South Korea. Why would Qualcomm's pricing affect European businesses. At worst they are lowering the costs for European handset makers.
The problem with the EU is they don't PROVIDE tech. They use tech based in systems already used today.
There is no innovation in computer science going on in the EU (Or anywhere now really if we get technical.).
The EU is not one solid object like the "United States". The diversity and old issues alone disallow a stable tech sector. There is a reason there is no "Silicon Valley" based in the EU. I think the closest thing Europe has to Silicon Valley is Dublin. Yes Dublin.
Besides as a person who has contracted out coders from places like Denmark...
The EU contractors ask FAR too much for the work that a Serb or Ukranian will do in half the time for 75% of the fee.
That's the problem with Europe. They value coders like it's 1990 and the .com drop never hit.
That's why I personally stopped contracting out to EU coders. This isn't 1995 guys. The work isn't that hard and compilers make things so much easier now than back in the days. No excuse for 1995 rates on things like "active x integration".
The problem isn't that folks don't seek Euro coders. It's the fact that Euro coders believe their jobs can't be done by others because they haven't had the hit to the face in the tech sector yet.
Ease of use diminishes value.
Do you know what IMEC is? If you get faster Intel chips tomorrow, it's because of IMEC.
Did you know that Intel and Samsung give this European company billions of dollars to do research for them?
Billions are invested each year into European science labs to increase the speed of chips, Intel, Nvidia, Qualcomm, TSMC, Samsung, AMD, billions are given to research labs so Europe can do the work for them.
You know why Europe wants to get their tech and chip sector back up and running, because the majority of tech development is happening in Europe right now, but instead of it staying in Europe, it's being sold to foreign companies.
Currently state of the art chip research is almost exclusively done in Europe, while production is almost exclusively done in Asia and the US. Since production is still the most valuable part of the equation, Europe wants to be part of that.
White Intel designs chips, Europe makes all the lithography machines that make them.
Europe, arguably the continent with the least protectionism, tries to help its tech sector recover by forcing companies to play by the rules. And americans (including the US president) are shouting them down, buying over Nokia and firing everyone.
Go EU.
I know of the UFC and it's attempted and continued monolopy as well as other anti trust ideals and they have yet to be sued although one lawsuit going on still.
IMO both Soundblaster and Nvidia got to where they are because of controlling their competition out of the business.
To me it is just good to see some get caught but yes the homie idea is always there,think back the US and CDN Beef scandals and tainted beef.At least the CDN officials just tried to remove one aspect while the US government was trying to label all CDN beef as tainted lol.
Bottom line is people live under a rock too often,when comes to money you can bet their is corruption of some kind at every turn.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.