April 20, 2024

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South Korea’s antitrust regulator said on March 21 that it has canceled part of a penalty of 273 billion won ($243 million) it previously levied against US mobile chipmaking giant Qualcomm.

The move by the Fair Trade Commission came two months after the Supreme Court ruled that certain periods, during which Qualcomm offered exclusive rebates to LG Electronics in return for the Korean firm buying its radio frequency chips, should be excluded from the penalty.

Qualcomm paid millions of dollars to Samsung Electronics and LG each quarter between 2000 and 2009 on condition that they use only Qualcomm modem chips and radio frequency chips for certain smartphone models, according to the commission.

But the San Diego-based firm paid rebates exclusively to LG from July 2000 to June 2005 and from January 2007 to July 2009 in exchange for it buying the radio frequency chips.

In January, Korea’s highest court ruled that LG’s share in the smartphone market from 2006 to 2008 stood at between 21.6 percent and 25.9 percent, which is not considered a majority, and thus it is less likely that its increasing use of Qualcomm chips hurt fair market competition.

The commission said that it has canceled 48.6 billion won out of its original penalty of 273 billion won against Qualcomm, meaning that Korea should return about 63 billion won to the US mobile chipmaking giant.

By Ram Garikipati and newswires (ram@heraldcorp.com)