Brussels — EU regulators on Wednesday fined Qualcomm €997m for paying Apple to shun rival chips in its iPhones. The largest maker of chips that help run smartphones "paid billions of US dollars to a key customer, Apple, so that it would not buy from rivals", EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said. "This meant that no rival could effectively challenge Qualcomm in this market, no matter how good their products were." Qualcomm struck a deal with Apple in 2011 that pledged significant payments if Apple used only Qualcomm chipsets for the iPhone and iPad devices. That agreement was renewed in 2013 until 2016. Qualcomm warned it would stop these payments if Apple sold another product with a rival chip. This effectively shut out competitors such as Intel from the market for LTE baseband chipsets used in the 4G mobile phone standard for five years, the EU said. The EU moves come as Qualcomm tries to fend off a $105bn hostile takeover by rival Broadcom and wages war with Apple i...
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