Apple Inc has filed suit in China challenging Qualcomm Inc’s fees for technology used in smartphones two years after Chinese regulators fined the chipmaker for its licensing practices.
Two lawsuits filed by the iPhone maker accuse Qualcomm of abusing its control over essential technology to charge excessive licensing fees, a Beijing court said on its microblog.
It said Apple reports suffering 1 billion yuan (US$145.4 million) in “economic losses” and asks for 2.5 million yuan.
Photo: Keystone via AP
Most of Apple’s iPhones and other products are assembled in China by contractors.
Apple filed a similar complaint in US federal court in San Diego, California, on Saturday last week, accusing Qualcomm of demanding royalties for innovations on iPhones that have nothing to do with Qualcomm’s technology.
The US lawsuit seeks US$1 billion in damages.
The US Federal Trade Commission also has filed a lawsuit accusing Qualcomm of imposing unfair licensing terms on manufacturers.
San Diego-headquartered Qualcomm said in a statement that it had not seen Apple’s complaint to the Chinese court, but defended its fees.
The company said Apple rejected terms consistent with those accepted by more than 100 Chinese manufacturers, adding that its fees were consistent with changes worked out with Chinese regulators.
“These filings by Apple’s Chinese subsidiary are just part of Apple’s efforts to find ways to pay less for Qualcomm’s technology,” Don Rosenberg, executive vice president and general counsel of Qualcomm, said in the statement.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)