Qualcomm accused European Union investigators of being “biased” towards Apple when they ordered a 997 million-euro (US$1.2 billion) antitrust fine for allegedly pressuring the iPhone maker to only buy its 4G chips.
Stephanie Bodoni for Bloomberg:
The European Commission “engaged in a biased investigation” and allowed Apple to “dictate the evidence, narrative and conclusions,” Miguel Rato, a lawyer for Qualcomm, told the EU General Court on Tuesday, citing an internal Apple memo. This was “gross and indefensible maladministration.”
On the first of three days of hearings in Luxembourg, Qualcomm said the 2015 document showed how EU officials “dealt with Apple secretly on several occasions,” before concluding in 2018 that the world’s largest smartphone chipmaker had made illegal payments to Apple to ensure only its chips were used in iPhones and iPads.
The EU’s case “is about some $3 billion that Qualcomm paid Apple in return for exclusivity over Apple’s requirements for chipsets compliant with the LTE standard on which 4G mobile communications are based,” Nicholas Khan, a lawyer for the commission, told the court. Qualcomm’s agreements included “a carefully crafted combination of inducements through rising payments and threats through reimbursement obligations if exclusivity was broken.”
MacDailyNews Take: The EU, after failing to clawback $14.9 billion in a failed tax grab, just hit Apple with sham antitrust charges over App Store practices this week.
That’s some “pro-Apple bias” the EU has there. Raging.
The sooner Apple relegates extortionist Qualcomm to a life of supplying inferior modems to pretend iPhones, the better.
AAPL shares pounded hard today -3% (on top of a 1.5% loss yesterday). Volumes are massive, almost record levels as investors stampede to the exit. Extremely heavy selling shows that there is little to no faith in Apple’s future.
I would sell my Apple shares if I were you.
With the poor dividend announcement, 50% of my AAPL holdings were sold off. I grew tired of Tim Cook’s empty excuses. I need more income than AAPL can deliver. I guess that they are not profitable enough to pay the people who actually own the company. You’ll learn when you are older the importance of income.
Multi decade long shareholder here, longer than MDN has even existed.
Is that you “Investor”? Same old entitled rubbish. Repeat after me ,
AAPL is not Apple Inc.
You do not ‘own’ the company. All you ‘own’ is a few bits of paper/shares
that grant access to a gambling den aka the stock market, consisting of manipulated value league tables which – if you are Apple, bear no relation to actual trading performance.
Said company may decide to pay you a dividend occasionally, as a reward for lending your money to the company which it used to made a profit.
If your company rises in the value league table, you may decide to ‘take profits’(sell) out of your investments which then means they are worth less. It really isn’t that complicated.
“ grant access to a gambling den aka the stock market,”
Love it.
Looking at the ticker tape at the top of this page, Tim Cook has apparently driven down the price of Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Intel, too. Looking more broadly, Tim has also singlehandedly driven down the entire market reflected by sharp declines in the Dow Jones, NASDAQ, and S&P.
@ Tim Apple : it’s called “profit taking”.
If you can’t manage your investments for the long term, I highly recommend you avoid stock trading altogether. You sound extremely bitter and that’s not good for you.
Shows that they have no clue as to what Apple actually does, most don’t which is why many people who do are rich because they invested in long in Apple.
“The EU, after failing to clawback $14.9 billion in a failed tax grab…”
It didn’t fail in that. The EU was seeking to “grab” exactly 0.00 Euros for itself, and that is precisely what it got. What it did not get was a ruling forcing Ireland to alter its taxation rules to comply with its EU treaty requirements (as the European Commission and some other EU members read them). If the EU had won, Apple would have owed Ireland individually $14.9 billion, none of which would have gone to the EU as a government or as an entity, but the individual clawback was not the motivation for the litigation. “Grabbing” was certainly not Ireland’s motivation. It was on Apple’s side, figuring that preserving its favorable tax policies was worth more than the $14.9MM it would have received and kept for its own use free of EU control.
This was a legitimate dispute about tax policy. Ireland and Apple deserved to win, and did. Suggesting that it was something that it very clearly was not, a greedy grab for cash, is not helpful in understanding the overall history of relations between Apple and the European Union.
OMG my apple shares are only 1700% up on when I bought them.
What am I gonna do???
Investors are sheep (or lemmings), or at least the majority of them are.
A few of the early ones bailing out were “profit takers”. Several others bailed because of Epic. Several others bailed because of Spotify. Several others bailed because of the EU action. The list goes on and on and on. When the lemmings have died out AAPL will recover.
Apple has been a “rolling stock” since the early 90s — even through the dark days. While the last couple decades have been an overall upwards trend, it’s been a rolling stock within that trend.
Apple will bounce back when the scared sheep stop leaving.
My AAPL investment is up over 60x from when I bought it years and years ago. IF I ever retire it will be a nice chunk of change to add to the rest of my “retirement” fund. I’m not at all worried.k
Apple is just a number/symbol on the big board most have no clue, never have, when I retire next year and reveal the final numbers to family and friends they will fall over in disbelief, long Apple….