A Reuters report suggests that Qualcomm could be facing an investigation by the European Commission into an allegation of anti-competitive behaviour made by a subsidiary of Nvidia four years ago.
British firm Icera was acquired by Nvidia in 2011, after it had already made a complaint to the EC in June 2010 accusing Qualcomm of using patent-related incentives and exclusionary pricing to discourage customers from buying chips from Icera. According to Retuers, details of the complaint were never made public but following the upholding of Intel’s record fine earlier this year for abuse of its dominant market position (Display Monitor Vol 21 No 25), the EC has decided to open an investigation.
Qualcomm is currently also the subject of an investigation by China’s pricing regulator into alleged over pricing and abusing its market position. In 2009, Qualcomm was fined $268 million by South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission over similar allegations.
