According to the latest news, as Qualcomm crowded out competitors more than a decade ago, the EU imposed a fine of 242 million euros on Qualcomm for violating antitrust laws.Since Qualcomm used market dominance between 2009 and 2011 to sell a certain number of UMTS baseband chipsets to its two customers at a lower cost, the British mobile phone software maker Icere (now incorporated into NVIDIA) was squeezed out of the market. In 2015, the EU initiated allegations of unfair competition.
Just last year, the European Commission issued a huge fine of 997 million euros (about 1.1 billion US dollars) to Qualcomm in another anti-monopoly investigation, because the EU believes that Qualcomm abuses its market dominance by paying Apple In exchange for its exclusive use of Qualcomm chips in smartphones and tablets.
Qualcomm has been punished several times for violating the anti-monopoly law, and the patent royalties are the most controversial. In April of this year, Qualcomm just reached a settlement with Apple, ending the patent lawsuit that Apple was dissatisfied with Qualcomm's high patent fees and continued for several years.
In addition, Qualcomm and Huawei's patent fee disputes continue, Qualcomm said in the latest financial report that the company received a patent fee of 150 million US dollars from the Huawei quarter, and negotiations with Huawei are still continuing. It is not a day or two for Qualcomm to collect patent fees. With patents, it will charge high patent fees everywhere, and even the United States will not be able to stand it any longer.
In May of this year, the US Federal Trade Commission sued Qualcomm in court. The reason was that the other party had many unfair competitions that abused the telecom patent authorization and the dominant position in the mobile phone chip market. Finally, the court sentenced Qualcomm to lose the lawsuit and asked Qualcomm to take five remedial measures.
Qualcomm should be aware that the act of monopolizing the market by patent alone is not popular with the market. The patent dispute with Apple alone has caused Qualcomm's share price to shrink by more than $10 billion, and even more than $13 billion by competitor Broadcom. Acquisition. If such a dispute comes again, then Qualcomm may not be able to do it.