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EU Fines Qualcomm $1.2 Billion for Paying Apple To Use Its Microchips (apnews.com)
The European Union on Wednesday slapped a $1.23 billion fine on U.S. chipmaker Qualcomm for abusing its market dominance in the lucrative sector of components in smartphones and tablets for half a decade. From a report: EU Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said that San Diego-based Qualcomm "illegally shut out rivals from the market" for more than five years by paying key customer Apple to not use chips made by Qualcomm's rivals. Vestager said Qualcomm paid "billions of dollars" to Apple and in the process helped establish itself as the dominant force.
Throwing the asshole executives (all of them in big companies) who only see short term profits in jail for at least 20 years is better. Let's be real, it's not gonna be the upper management who pays for this, but the lower ranks.
The key, I believe, is that there was an exclusivity clause in the contract. The EU are very wary of such things (with good reason if you believe that monopolizing practices are harmful).
Now - had the contract been that they would sell X number of chips for a given prices then I suspect that there wouldn't have been a case - whether that X amounted to 100%, 99% or 150% of what Apple used. The problem was that the agreement they reached excluded other manufacturers.
Exclusivity contracts are one of those things that fall into a bit of a market freedom paradox. In a truly free market then they should be possible (because you can sign a contract for anything, right?) but in being available they curtail market freedom once in place.
As a proponent of market freedom (or control) you can fall either side on whether they are a good or bad thing.
-- Gaxx