South Korean watchdog fines Qualcomm $208 million
23 Jul 2009
After Intel, it is now the turn of Qualcom to have run afoul of the Korean anti-trust regulator, Korean Fair Trade Commission (KFTC).
South Korea's anti-trust regulator has come down heavily on US chipmaker Qualcomm, imposing a $208 million in penalty for abuse of market dominance, the largest ever fine imposed by Korea.
Awarding its biggest fine against a single company, KFTC said that it has fined Qualcomm $208 million for abusing its leadership in the local market for code division multiple access (CDMA) mobile phone chips.
With 2008 market share in South Korea of over 99 per cent, Qualcomm stifled competition by levying higher royalties on companies that used chips supplied by rival companies and favoured customers who used its products by offering discounts and rebates, the commission said.
KFT had been investigating the case for more than three years after rival chipmakers Texas Instruments and Broadcom Corp had complained about its abusive actions.
Qualcomm is the inventor of CDMAone (IS-95), CDMA 2000, and CDMA 1xEV-DO, which are wireless cellular standards used for communications. The company also owns significant number of key patents on the widely adopted 3G technology, W-CDMA.