Abuse of dominance and exclusive deals: Qualcomm’s chipsets are down
On January 24, 2017, the European Commission announced that it had fined Qualcomm EUR 997,439,000. The Commission thinks that Qualcomm had abused its dominant position to become Apple’s sole supplier of long term evolution (“LTE“) baseband chipsets. The abuse was allegedly committed through exclusive deals, which lasted from 2011 to 2016. Baseband chipsets are key components in smartphones and tablets, which enable connection…