Qualcomm is at odds with EU antitrust authorities over Huawei and ZTE rebates

Author: Foo Yun Chee

LUXEMBOURG (Reuters) – Qualcomm on Tuesday criticized European Union antitrust regulators for defining rebates given to Chinese phone makers Huawei and ZTE during the second day of a court hearing seeking to overturn a 242 million euro ($259 million) fine.

The US chipmaker is taking its case to the General Court, Europe’s second-largest, after winning a fight last year to overturn a €997 million EU antitrust fine in another case

The European Commission fined Qualcomm in 2019, accusing it of predatory pricing by selling its mobile Internet dongle chipsets between 2009 and 2011 at a lower cost to thwart British phone software maker Icera, now part of Nvidia Corp.

The EU competition enforcer said an analysis of Qualcomm’s prices showed it was selling some of its chips to Huawei and ZTE below cost, and that rebates and rebates drove down final prices.

Qualcomm’s lawyer rejected that analysis on the second day of the three-day hearing.

“The Commission should have applied the price-cost test over a longer and more significant period. If the Commission had made these two simple corrections, it would not have identified the presence of predators,” Athina Kontasakou told the court.

It found that the Commission was wrong to treat annual lump sum payments made by Qualcomm to customers as hidden rebates and rebates.

Commission lawyer Martin Farley defended his analysis of Qualcomm’s pricing as “substantially correct and sound.”

“All the decisions that the Commission made within its discretion in calculating costs were intended to ensure that they reflected reality,” he told the judges.

The court will issue a ruling in the coming months. The case is T-671/19 Qualcomm v Commission.

($1 = 0.9341 euro)

(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Editing by Sharon Singleton)