South Korea's Fair Trade Commission is investigating Qualcomm. That's what a person familiar with the matter told Reuters on Thursday. The move adds to the antitrust woes for the US chipmaker, following a record fine it agreed to pay in China.
South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission reportedly investigating U.S. chipmaker Qualcomm for alleged antitrust violations. Reuters News Agency, citing an anonymous source, and backing up a report from a local daily newspaper, that the commission will look into whether Qualcomm has been abusing its dominant market position.
The commission will also be sending inquiries to smartphone makers like Samsung Electronics and Qualcomm competitors like Intel. This isn’t the first time Qualcomm has been under fire from South Korean regulators, in 2009, the company was fined a record of over 200 million dollars on similar allegations, basically charging higher prices on phone makers that bought CDMA chips from competitors, while offering rebates to customers that bought mainly from Qualcomm.
Now, this latest investigation stems from a completely different case but details are scarce, all parties involved are refusing to comment on the issue.
We know that just this week, Qualcomm agreed to pay a nearly one billion dollar fine in China. Fair trade officials from China and S. Korea were in close coordination on this matter, just last August meetings were held so that Chinese officials could seek advice from their S. Korean counterparts in creating arguments against Qualcomm stemming from the 2009 case.
So for Qualcomm, if these latest reports are true, add S. Korea to the list of where the company will have to deal with an antitrust probe in addition to places like Europe and the U.S.