The EU Court of Justice confirms that the anti-monopoly fine against Qualcomm (QCOM.US) has been slightly reduced to 2.387 billion euros.

The European Court of Justice on Wednesday basically confirmed the European Union's antitrust fine against Qualcomm (QCOM.US) and slightly reduced the fine from the original 2.42 billion euros to 2.387 billion euros. The European Commission imposed a fine on Qualcomm in 2019, accusing the company of selling its chipsets at below cost between 2009 and 2011. This practice, known as predatory pricing, aimed to drive British phone software maker Icera out of the market. Qualcomm argued that the 3G baseband chipsets mentioned in the case only accounted for 0.7% of the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) market, so it could not have excluded competitors from the chipset market. The General Court in Luxembourg stated that it had thoroughly examined all of Qualcomm's defenses, all of which were rejected except for the part concerning the calculation of the fine amount. It is worth mentioning that in another antitrust investigation in 2018, the European Commission imposed a hefty fine of 997 million euros on Qualcomm. In this investigation, the Commission ruled that Qualcomm had paid special fees to smartphone manufacturer Apple Inc. (AAPL.US) in exchange for exclusive supply rights, thereby excluding competitors including Intel Corporation. However, in June 2022, the court ruled that there was not enough evidence to show that Apple Inc. or the entire market had been harmed by Qualcomm's agreement with Apple Inc., and overturned the previous 997 million euro fine against Qualcomm.