EU slaps Qualcomm with $1.23 billion fine over illegal chip payment to Apple

23-03-2018

The European Union on Wednesday announced that it determined chipmaker Qualcomm illegally shut out rivals when it paid Apple billions of dollars to stick with its LTE baseband chips for five years. Qualcomm will pay a hefty price for its misdeeds: 997 million euros, or $1.23 billion U.S. “Qualcomm paid billions of US Dollars to a key customer, Apple, so that it would not buy from rivals,” European Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager said in a statement. “These payments were not just reductions in price —they were made on the condition that Apple would exclusively use Qualcomm’s baseband chipsets in all its iPhones and iPads.”