By Diane Bartz and Stephen Nellis
Apple Inc filed
a $1 billion lawsuit against supplier Qualcomm Inc on Friday, days after the
U.S. government accused the chip maker of resorting to anticompetitive tactics
to maintain a monopoly over key semiconductors in mobile phones.
Qualcomm is a
major supplier to both Apple and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd for
"modem" chips that connect phones to wireless networks. The two
companies together accounted for 40 percent of Qualcomm's $23.5 billion in
revenue in its most recent fiscal year.
In the lawsuit
filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, Apple
accused Qualcomm of overcharging for chips and refusing to pay some $1 billion
in promised rebates. Apple said in its complaint that Qualcomm withheld the
rebates because of Apple's discussions with South Korea's antitrust regulator,
the Korea Fair Trade Commission.
"If that
were not enough, Qualcomm then attempted to extort Apple into changing its
responses and providing false information to the KFTC in exchange for
Qualcomm's release of those payments to Apple. Apple refused," Apple said
in its lawsuit.
In a statement,
Qualcomm General Counsel Don Rosenberg called Apple's claims
"baseless."
"Apple has
been actively encouraging regulatory attacks on Qualcomm’s business in various
jurisdictions around the world, as reflected in the recent KFTC decision and
FTC complaint, by misrepresenting facts and withholding information,"
Rosenberg said in the statement.
"We welcome
the opportunity to have these meritless claims heard in court where we will be
entitled to full discovery of Apple’s practices and a robust examination of the
merits.”
Qualcomm's stock
closed 2.4 percent lower at $62.88 on the news.
Qualcomm has
patents for chips which include standard essential patents, a term used to
describe technology that is required to be licensed broadly and on
"reasonable" terms.
In its lawsuit,
Apple accused Qualcomm of refusing to license the technology to other
manufacturers to prevent them from making the chips.
It also accused
Qualcomm of selling chips while requiring Apple to pay a separate licensing fee
for the same chips, in a "no license, no chip" policy.
In addition,
Qualcomm pressured network carriers to not sell or support Apple devices made
with Intel chipsets Apple said.
The KFTC fined
Qualcomm $854 million in December for what it called unfair patent licensing
practices.
In February
2015, Qualcomm paid a $975 million fine in China, while the European Union in
December 2015 accused it of abusing its market power to thwart rivals.
On Tuesday, the
U.S. Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit against Qualcomm, saying the San
Diego-based company used its dominant position as a supplier of certain phone
chips to impose "onerous" supply and licensing terms on cellphone
manufacturers. Qualcomm said it would contest the FTC complaint.
Qualcomm was the
sole supplier of modem chips for Apple’s phones until the release of the iPhone
7 in September. Intel Corp supplied about half of the modem chips for the
newest models, said Stacy Rasgon, a senior analyst at Bernstein Research.
Intel's shares closed up 1 percent at $36.94 after the Qualcomm suit was
announced.
Apple made the
move around the same time that Samsung, which had switched to using its own
internal chips for its Galaxy S6 phones, returned to Qualcomm for the Galaxy
S7.
Qualcomm
"has been able to manage through (the Apple contract loss) pretty well
because they got back Samsung at the same time," Rasgon said.
Apple
is known for seeking multiple suppliers to keep prices down, said Jim Morrison,
vice president of technical intelligence for TechInsights, which tears down
devices to analyze their parts.
(Reporting
by Diane Bartz in Washington and Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Editing by
Matthew Lewis and Cynthia Osterman)
No comments:
Post a Comment