EU Court upholds Qualcomm antitrust fine and slightly reduces it

Europe’s second-highest court on Wednesday largely upheld the European Union’s antitrust fine against U.S. chipmaker Qualcomm, slightly reducing the amount to 238.7 million euros ($265.5 million) from an initial 242 million euros.

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

Qualcomm argued that the 3G baseband chipsets involved in the case accounted for only 0.7% of the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) market, making it impossible to exclude competitors from the chipset market.

The Luxembourg General Court said it had “examined in detail all the defences raised by Qualcomm and rejected them all, with the exception of the defence concerning the calculation of the fine, which it considered to be partially well-founded”.

Qualcomm can appeal the legal issue to Europe’s highest court, the Court of Justice of the European Union.

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

Two years ago, the company convinced the same court to quash a €997 million antitrust fine in 2018 for paying Apple billions of dollars between 2011 and 2016 to use only its chips in all its iPhones and iPads in order to block rivals such as Intel Corp.

EU regulators subsequently declined to appeal the ruling.

The case is T-671/19 Qualcomm v. Commission (Qualcomm – Predatory Pricing).