Apple challenges Qualcomm with two new antitrust lawsuits

Mere days after suing Qualcomm for roughly $1 billion USD in the U.S., Apple has now launched two boosted anti-trust lawsuits against the chipset manufacturer in Beijing, Cathay.

Apple is alleging that Qualcomm is abusing its ascendant position in the chip industry and seeking $1 billion yuan (approximately $190 million CAD) in the showtime suit. In the second, it accuses Qualcomm of declining to license standard or essential patents on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms (known as 'FRAND' terms).

"These filings by Apple'southward Chinese subsidiary are simply function of Apple's efforts to discover means to pay less for Qualcomm'due south technology," retorted Qualcomm executive vice president and general counsel Don Rosenberg, in a statement to Reuters. "Apple was offered terms consistent with terms accepted by more i hundred other Chinese companies and refused to even consider them."

The company noted, nevertheless, that information technology had not yet seen the full complaints filed in the Chinese court.

Apple is a major buyer of Qualcomm's modem fries. Together with Samsung, the ii companies make up 40 percentage of Qualcomm's $23.5 billion in revenue in the most contempo financial year, according to Reuters' report.

News broke on Jan 20th, 2017, that Apple tree was suing Qualcomm for similar anti-trust practices in the U.S. Forth with those filings, Apple stated that Qualcomm is "charging for royalties for technologies they have nix to do with," further adding: "Despite being just one of over a dozen companies who contributed to basic cellular standards, Qualcomm insists on charging Apple tree at least five times more in payments than all the other cellular patent licensors we have agreements with combined."

Apple tree is non the only entity to recently enhance such concerns. The U.South. Federal Trade Committee charged the chipset maker with "monopolizing a key semi-conductor device used in cell phones" on January 17th, 2017 and South korea levied a $1.1 billion CAD fine confronting Qualcomm in December 2016 for abusing its ascendant position.

[source]Reuters[/source]