On September 18, 2024, the Court of Justice of the European Union upheld a fine imposed upon Qualcomm by the European Commission. However, the General Court lowered the amount of the fine from approximately €242 million to €238.7 million. The case came before the CJEU when Qualcomm challenged the imposition of the fine on fifteen separate grounds and asked the Court to either annul the fine or substantially reduce the amount.
According to the judgment, U.S.-based Qualcomm is a cellular and wireless telecommunications company that provides certain customers with slim and integrated baseband chipsets that meet the Universal Mobile Telecommunications Systems standard (“UMTS chipsets”) – chipsets that are commonly used in mobile phones, tablets, laptops and similar consumer electronics. The Commission determined that Qualcomm held the dominant position in the UMTS chipset market on a worldwide level from at least January 1, 2009 to December 31, 2011. The fine was imposed in July 2019, after Commission investigators determined that, between June 2010 and July 2015, Qualcomm had abused its dominant position by supplying Huawei and ZTE, two of its key customers, with below cost chipsets in an attempt to eliminate Icera, its main competitor at the time, from the market.
The CJEU rejected all of Qualcomm’s pleas in their entirety, except for the plea concerning the calculation of the fine amount, which was upheld only in part. The CJEU determined that the methodology reflected in the 2006 Guidelines was most appropriate for this case, and Commission’s departure from this calculation method was without justification. For this reason, the CJEU lowered the amount of Qualcomm’s fine from €242,042,000 to €238,732,659.33.