Qualcomm Fined $773m by Taiwan for Antitrust Violations (Oct 11, 2017)
Following existing investigations and/or action over antitrust issues against Qualcomm in the US, South Korea, and China, Taiwanese authorities have issued a $773m fine against the company over the same issues. The government’s Fair Trade Commission found that Qualcomm acted anticompetitively when it forced licensees for its standards-essential patterns to accept onerous terms as a condition of licensing. The fine relates to a 7-year period in which the FTC says Qualcomm was paid around $13 billion by Taiwanese manufacturers (presumably HTC and contract manufacturers like Foxconn). This antitrust situation is going more and more badly for Qualcomm, but the biggest outstanding case is of course its fight with Apple, which is withholding its own and contractors’ royalties from the company pending the outcome of various lawsuits. It’s hard to see this all going Qualcomm’s way at this point, and it feels like it’s mostly a question of how much the royalty rate will end up being reduced, and therefore what the financial hit will be.
via Bloomberg
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