
Qualcomm Is Accused of Violating Antitrust Rules in Europe - pavornyoh
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/09/technology/qualcomm-is-accused-of-violating-antitrust-rules-in-europe.html?ref=technology&_r=0
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rlongstaff
Hmm. Somewhat biased presentation in the article with use of the words "the
latest in a growing number of competition investigations targeting American
technology companies."

Gives the impression the EU is deliberately going after US companies when in
fact the majority that are investigated for anti-competitive acts are
European.

~~~
kuschku
Indeed.

We all profit from having a free market, for that to be existing consumers
need to have a choice; the market has to be either free of monopolies, or we
have to make sure the monopoly on one market (say, web search) doesn’t quickly
turn into a monopoly for other markets (say, mobile OS, web maps, etc), too.

~~~
icebraining
"We have to make sure there are no monopolies" (or that monopolies don't
"spread") is a dangerous approach, since it leads to the politician's fallacy.
It may not even be possible to keep a relatively free market while making sure
of that.

The question to ask is: are these EU investigations effective at reducing the
number and spread of monopolies? And if they aren't, what should we do?

Because looking at the Microsoft case, the effectiveness seems dubious.

~~~
kuschku
In the Microsoft case, the effectiveness was still noticeable.

The concept of the Microsoft case: Make sure that Microsoft can not get a
monopoly in the web.

How it was done: Install no browser by default, let people pick. People chose
what they had heard of, often Firefox or Chrome.

Result: It led to an almost instantaneous drop in IE market share on new
windows installs.

And it most definitely helped end IE’s monopoly over the market.

With Google, it will be far more problematic, and might even end up with
Google getting broken up into several companies, or even banned from some
markets, or even forced to operate like a governmental monopoly, and integrate
competing products equally as they integrate their own.

~~~
icebraining
The data show no significant long-term change after the BrowserChoice screen
was introduced (in March 2010): [http://gs.statcounter.com/#desktop-browser-
eu-monthly-200807...](http://gs.statcounter.com/#desktop-browser-eu-
monthly-200807-201510)

IE was dropping rapidly before, and it kept dropping more-or-less at the same
pace. Firefox actually _started_ dropping right around that time.

People want to believe, but where's the evidence?

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shmerl
Qualcomm is a very nasty company. One of the worst of its kind. Their
pointless attacks on free codecs[1] "just because" demonstrates it as well.

[1]:
[https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/1520/](https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/1520/)

~~~
icebraining
What does that link represent? Isn't it just a declaration that they have
patents which may conflict with Opus? Isn't that just what a patent holder is
expected to do?

~~~
shmerl
It represents their nastiness. They were contacted and it was explained to
them how their claim is invalid and those patents don't apply to Opus. But
they refused to remove this claim, "just because" (may be they like creating
FUD). You can ask Opus developers for more details on this. Qualcomm acted out
of bad will here.

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mtgx
I don't disagree with this, but this is exactly what Intel has been doing,
too, especially with the Atom platform in mobile. And Intel has a track record
of abusing anti-trust laws, so why hasn't anyone given a second look to
Intel's practices again? Maybe Intel is just better at hiding it in "deals"
with OEMs.

> Europe’s antitrust officials in Brussels said that Qualcomm, one of the
> world’s largest makers of chips, had abused its dominant market position in
> the region by offering financial incentives to smartphone and tablet
> manufacturers that agreed to buy equipment solely from Qualcomm.

~~~
pgeorgi
Intel, as in
[http://ec.europa.eu/competition/sectors/ICT/intel.html](http://ec.europa.eu/competition/sectors/ICT/intel.html)?

I think the antitrust regulators mostly act on complaints and given the time
frames they work in, it seems to be rather complex, so they don't take on too
many of them. So I guess it's just that nobody complained too loudly about
Intel in recent years.

EU regulators also have to deal with domestic cases that don't typically end
up on HN. Check
[http://ec.europa.eu/competition/elojade/isef/index.cfm](http://ec.europa.eu/competition/elojade/isef/index.cfm)

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mkristian
Also in China.

[http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-qualcomm-
idUSKBN0LD2...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-qualcomm-
idUSKBN0LD2EL20150210)

