Qualcomm's monopoly pushes Intel out of the baseband chip market

By Intel 75

Qualcomm's monopoly pushes Intel out of the baseband chip market

According to foreign technology website TechCrunch, recently, Intel Corps accused in a court document filed with the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that Qualcomm's monopoly practices forced Intel out of the baseband chip market. Intel said it had lost billions of dollars in its previous sale of the baseband chip business to Apple.

In May of this year, San Jose District Judge Lucy H. Koh issued a verdict on the US FTC suing Qualcomm over a suspected monopoly case, ruled that Qualcomm violated antitrust laws, and used its technological advantages to demand excessively high patent licensing fees from the market. Gao Lanhui ruled that Qualcomm must renegotiate the licensing agreement with customers. It must license patents (including 5G patents) to competitors (such as MediaTek, Samsung, Zhanrui, etc.) at a fair price, and it cannot sign exclusive agreements to prevent competitors from also selling chips to smartphone manufacturers such as Apple. In addition, Qualcomm must accept FTC supervision for up to 7 years.

Obviously, this judgment is very unfavorable for Qualcomm! This will cause serious damage to the patent licensing model on which it depends! Therefore, Qualcomm immediately appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals after losing the lawsuit, and also submitted an application for the suspension of the execution of the antitrust decision. Qualcomm claims that if it re-signs the patent license agreement with other manufacturers around the world in accordance with the judgment, once it wins the appeal, Qualcomm will not be able to modify the license agreement again.

On August 23, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco, California approved Qualcomm's request to suspend the execution of US Federal District Judge Gao Lanhui's antitrust judgment against Qualcomm.

Intel has now filed a statement with the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in support of an FTC ruling in May.

Intel ’s statement stated that “Intel was first hit by Qualcomm ’s anti-competitive behavior because it lost its opportunity in the Modem chip market, was unable to sell to customers, or was forced to sell at artificially distorted prices.” Intel also specifically stated that Include yourself in the list of "competitors out of the modem chip market." Intel's latest blog post and its executive vice president and general counsel Steven R. Rodgers's interpretation of the statement also reiterated this view.

Earlier this year, Apple and Qualcomm agreed to withdraw each other's lawsuits, thus resolving the dispute between the two companies in court since 2017. The two companies were once partners, but they have been in court ever since Apple accused Qualcomm of overcharging patents. The settlement agreement between the two parties includes a one-time payment of compensation to Apple by Qualcomm, a six-year licensing agreement signed by the two parties, and a supply agreement for Qualcomm's chipset for Apple products.

At the same time, Intel announced its withdrawal from the Modem chip business-this announcement seems timely because Apple has been trying to use Intel's Modem chips in its recently launched iPhone to avoid Qualcomm products. Qualcomm is the industry leader when it comes to the supply of wireless communication chips for smartphones. Then in July of this year, Apple announced that it would acquire most of Intel's smartphone business, which led many to speculate that Apple would eventually seek to develop its own wireless communications chip internally to reduce its dependence on Qualcomm.

Intel obviously won't stop there, as its blog post states that it invested "billions" in building its own modem chip business and was then forced to sell to Apple-which certainly sounds like it is working with Apple Not all the sunk costs were recovered in the transaction because the size of the transaction was only about $ 1 billion.

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