Two Antitrust Investigations into Qualcomm

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Summary: European agencies have been coming down hard on several U.S. companies to ensure that they are following the rules for fair market practices.

Qualcomm dominates the market for chipsets. Google Inc and Apple Inc are being investigated by European Commission for antitrust and now two investigations by the agency are being conducted on Qualcomm Inc.

  

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The San Diego-based company is being investigated to determine if they gave financial incentives to customers in return for them only buying their 3G and 4G chipsets. The second investigation is looking into if Qualcomm used “predatory pricing” in order to sell their 3G chips below cost and force rivals out.

European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager stated in the release that “We are launching these investigations because we want to be sure that high tech suppliers can compete on the merits of their products. Many customers use electronic devices such as a mobile phone or a tablet and we want to ensure that they ultimately get value for money.”

The European Union has been cracking down on U.S. technology companies with antitrust investigations with Google and Amazon.com Inc’s ebook business. They are also looking at Amazon, Starbucks, and Apple for their European tax practices. Qualcomm released a statement saying they were “cooperating” with the investigation. Qualcomm leads the market in manufacturing baseband chipsets in devices with WiFi and 4G phones.

Source: http://www.ibtimes.com/qualcomm-hit-two-antitrust-investigations-european-union-2011482

Photo: extremetech.com