EU court upholds Qualcomm antitrust fine, with minor reduction by Reuters

By Foo Yun Chee

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Europe’s second court largely upheld an EU antitrust fine on U.S. chipmaker Qualcomm (NASDAQ: ) on Wednesday, revising it slightly down to 238.7 million euros (265, 5 million dollars) from the initial 242 million euros.

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

Qualcomm argued that the 3G baseband chipsets highlighted in this case represented only 0.7% of the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) market and therefore it was not possible to exclude rivals from the chipset market.

The Court conducted “a detailed examination of all of Qualcomm’s pleas, rejecting all of them in their entirety, except for one plea regarding the calculation of the amount of the fine, which it finds to be partially well founded.” said the Luxembourg Court.

Qualcomm can appeal on questions of law to the Court of Justice of the EU, the highest court in Europe.

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

The company persuaded the same court two years ago to drop a 997 million euro antitrust fine handed down in 2018 for paying billions of dollars to Apple (NASDAQ: ) from 2011 to 2016 to use only its chips in all its iPhones and iPads to block rivals like Intel Corp (NASDAQ:).

The EU watchdog later refused to appeal the ruling.

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

(1 USD = 0.8990 euros)