Qualcomm fined €242m over 'predatory pricing' that helped to knock off British competitor Icera The European Commission has issued American chip maker Qualcomm with a hefty €242m fine for anti-competitive practices. The commission claimed the company had sold 3G baseband chipsets – used for voice and data transmission – at a loss, just so it could force its British competitor, wireless modem-maker Icera, out of business …
You'd need to prove Uber are undercutting first, with the way Uber works that is near impossible to prove. Being cheaper is not the same thing as anti-competitive behaviour, underselling by artificially lowering prices to force out competition would be required for a case whereas it could be argued that the services Uber supplies are inline with it costs for the services provided. If you could prove that Uber was intentionally forcing prices down past that point with the intention to force out competition, then you'd see a case.
Laws are made for an outcome. Fair and transparent fit in there somewhere.
While the rebate/secret commission/backhander/ tied contract/volume pricing whatever may have been legal, these tricks, along with others (export income non taxable if usa co) and patent cross licencing? the net effect is/does kill off competition. I think AMD once discovered
Most EU/UK laws fail. The American lawyers run rings around you. You need to tax imports that have non-transparent manufacturing elements hard.
USA is now banning Huawei, because they don't like their own brand of commercial medicine.
Not sure I can even follow this one? Are you claiming that US Law is better than EU? That doesn't sound remotely true. Given also in this case that it is the EU and not the US that brought Qualcomm's anti-competitive behaviour to the courts. Is there perhaps a similar action in the US?... given the parent companies are both US companies... well?
Most US law is traditionally based off of UK law anyways given The Constitution was based off of the Magma Carta. Also the banning of Huawei is just Trump throwing his toys out of the pram because it is a Chinese company doing better than America ones, the UK actually did a FULL analysis of all the security issues within Huawei's 5G implementation and found numerous issues, but none in regards to any intentional backdoors or the such. Everything you're saying here just seems to be faith based patriotism with zero facts, logic or rationales behind it.
I don't like Uber, I don't like its business model, I've never used it and I don't ever intend to.
Having said that, comparing Uber [clean cars, polite drivers, punctual, know where they are going, upfront pricing and the ability to pay with a credit card] with the Hackney and Private Hire cabs in my town [NOT(clean cars, polite drivers, punctual, know where they are going, upfront pricing and the ability to pay with a credit card)] would be a bit of a stretch. If Uber puts them out of business it won't be just because of pricing.
> Uber [clean cars, polite drivers, punctual, know where they are going, upfront pricing and the ability to pay with a credit card]
I'll grant the upfront pricing element, but as for the rest: you're clearly in a much different place to me.
Most local Uber drivers are from out of town - local cabbies actually held a protest march about how many of them were coming into the area. As a result, they haven't a clue where they're going and rely on their GPS unit, which often has suboptimal routes and doesn't deal well with the many oddities of British cities, especially when roadworks are involved.
E.g. my house is on a halfway up a hill, on a side-road parallel to the main road. Uber's satnav has a tendency to direct the driver to go all the way up the hill and then come back down, rather than turning onto my road at the bottom of the hill and then driving up.
Equally, while on a night out in the city centre, I was greatly amused when watching the way one taxi driver kept circling around my position as he couldn't figure out how to get to me. And I took great delight in contesting his attempt to cancel the ride and charge me for his failure.
Conversely, the main local taxi firm hasn't taken the Uber/Lyft threat lying down. They have an app for ordering taxis, they take credit cards and there's none of that "surge pricing" nonsense - in fact, in general they're pretty cost competitive with Uber. And perhaps most importantly, they know the local area! And there's been more than a few occasions where Uber had a long-lead time (or no taxis available at all), but where the local taxi firm arrived within just a few minutes of my request.
Black cabs, OTOH, are measurably more expensive, but then, you are paying for the "flag down" privilege - even if this is arguably much less important these days, now that you can just fire up an app to summon a ride...
so Qualcomm could still win, long term, in spite of the fine. Somewhat like the €497 million that it fined Microsoft a few years back.
Part of the problem is the time taken by the investigation - far too long.
> Part of the problem is the time taken by the investigation - far too long.
And another big part of the problem is that the board and CxOs in charge at the time aren't able to be banned from holding such positions. Cutting them off from their large salaries and even larger bonuses would have a miraculous effect on their behaviour.
Actually Nvidia after it was acquired, great people to work with and a chance to do great work.
Jensen Huang could have closed the place down earlier but he stuck to the five years promised and even flew over to stand in front of us. A lot of us respected him for that.
Happy days.
I am confused. How does the EU have any jurisdiction over what an American company (Broadcom) did to another American company (Nvidia)? Shouldn't this be something done by the Federal Trade Commission instead?Maybe you should read the article?
This is about an American firm, Qualcomm, and a British firm, Incera.
Nvidia owned Incera, but Incera itself was a company incorporated within the EU that just happens to have been owned by a US company, that doesn't make Incera a US company, it makes it a US owned British company.
Having disposed of that pesky 3G competitor they've pretty much had the 4G market to themselves. Good times! Now its time for 5G and -- wonder of all wonders, they've got a competitor, a company with serious resources and deep pockets. Undercutting to drive them out of business won't work so let's go for Plan 'B', a government ban.
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