The dominance of Qualcomm

Abstract

Margrethe Vestager had a reputation for being the “world’s most famous litigator’. Ever since she became the European Commissioner for Competition in 2014, she had successfully pursued cases of anti-trust violations against tech giants such as Google, Apple and Amazon. Now, she was looking at a case of predatory pricing against Qualcomm in the UMTS 3G chipsets domain between 2009 and 2011. The investigation had been initiated in 2015, however it was delayed since Qualcomm had not provided additional information required for the case and had appealed to General Court to suspend the investigation. Qualcomm had already been fined €997 million for abusing its market dominance by offering exclusivity payments to a key customer in the LTE baseband chipsets domain. However, cases of predatory pricing had always been difficult to establish, and many cases had been dismissed since there was not enough evidence to prove that the pricing was aimed at driving out competition. Margrethe Vestager’s decision in this case would send a strong signal that such anti-trust practices would not be tolerated, and firms need to be careful when resorting to such pricing tactics.