Qualcomm to appeal against another antitrust whopper: This time it's $873m courtesy of South Korea

Qualcomm is to appeal against the decision of a South Korean court to fine the US chip giant $873m for unfairly using patent licensing to stymie rivals' sales. The news put something of a cloud over the company's ongoing beanfeast in Hawaii, where it unveiled its next lineup of Snapdragon processors. The case dates back to …

[Jimmy2Cows]

In 2015 it paid almost a billion dollars to end a similar anti-trust probe in China

Such "settlements" should never be allowed.

Antitrust probes should always go to trial, otherwise it's just a thinly veiled bribe to make the allegations go away and does nothing to protect consumers or promote competitive behaviour.

[deevee]

Bring on 5G where Qualcomm doesn't have the patents to block out competitors and competition.

Just look at the sick state of the US mobile market, where half of the phones still use Qualcomm's 20+ year old incompatible (with the rest of the world) CDMA technology, and half the telco's there are so cheap they won't/wouldn't move to more modern GSM/LTE technologies.

Won't it be great when tourists can roam in America like they can in the rest of the world?

[FrogsAndChips]

I take that as an incentive to buy a burner phone and pre-paid SIM when you arrive there. Saves you the inconvenience of having your usual phone searched for any incriminating evidence by CBP officers.

[Michael Wojcik]

There's certainly something to be said for this option, even when you're traveling to an all-GSM country.

Sometimes when I travel out of the country I put my current SIM into an old phone with nothing much on it (some contacts, some old SMS, etc). Then I get a pre-paid SIM when I arrive and use that for the duration. It's more in case I lose the phone, or it gets stolen, than concerns over CBP searching it - but if the last should happen, I'd much rather they screw with an old phone with little storage and nothing I care about.