The EU General Court annuls the Commission’s decision regarding a dominant chip manufacturer as a result of insufficient analysis of anticompetitive effects and on procedural grounds (Qualcomm)

On June 15, 2022, the EU General Court (GCEU) annulled the EU Commission's (EC) decision C (2018) 240 final dated January 24, 2018 in Case AT.40220 in which the EC had imposed a fine of EUR 997.439 million on Qualcomm Inc. (Qualcomm) for having allegedly abused its dominant position on the market for certain chipsets which it supplied to Apple from 2011 to 2016 (the Contested Decision). Qualcomm is a US company which develops and supplies baseband chipsets (chipsets) for use in smartphones and tablets to enable them to connect to cellular networks, according to respective standards such as the Long-Term Evolution (LTE) standard, the Global System for Mobile (GSM) Communications standard and the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) standard. Chipsets are sold to original