US: Nvidia demands Qualcomm pay for a $352 million unit

Nvidia Corp. wants Qualcomm Inc. to pay up for allegedly crushing a $352 million chipset acquisition, according to details of a London lawsuit made public this week.

Nvidia claims it was forced to wind down its cellular mobile broadband chipset business, including its Icera unit just four years after buying it, as a result of Qualcomm’s “unlawful abuse of dominance,” according to documents released by a London court Tuesday.

Qualcomm’s alleged tactics led to “unexplained delays in customer orders, reductions in demand volumes and contracts never being entered into, even after a customer or mobile network cooperating with a prospective customer has agreed or expressed a strong intention to purchase” Nvidia’s chipsets, the company said in the lawsuit.

The compensation claim comes as European Union regulators step up antitrust investigations into Qualcomm sales tactics that officials said thwarted other designers of mobile-phone chip technology. Such objections can lead to fines or an EU order forcing a company to change its behavior.

Full content: Bloomberg

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