• Procedural irregularities invalidated the EU's analysis of Qualcomm’s conduct
The EU’s second-highest court dropped the $1.04 billion (€997 million) fine that the bloc’s antitrust regulator had levied on Qualcomm Inc. (NASDAQ: QCOM) for allegedly pressuring Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) to only buy its 4G chips.
The fine levied by the EU represented 4.9% of Qualcomm's turnover in 2017.
The EU General Court overturned the penalty it had levied on the alleged overpayments by Qualcomm to the iPhone maker to exclusively use Qualcomm chips.
According to Reuters, the judges said that several procedural irregularities affected Qualcomm's rights of defense and invalidated the Commission's analysis of the conduct.
“The Commission did not provide an analysis which makes it possible to support the findings that the payments concerned had reduced Apple’s incentives to switch to Qualcomm's competitors to obtain supplies of LTE chipsets for certain iPad models to be launched in 2014 and 2015,” they added
Source - EU, Reuters
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