Qualcomm is facing fresh allegations of anticompetitive conduct in Europe, just six months after seeing off a four-year probe by Europe's competition watchdog. The new complaint, being looked at by the European Commission, comes from Icera, a UK rival, which claims that Qualcomm is using patent-related incentives to discourage customers from doing business with Icera, the Financial Times reports. Icera offers a software-based design for its chips used in products such as mobile broadband modems. "Qualcomm may be getting a little worried about pricing. It is struggling to maintain its 60 percent margins and now it is seeing these guys coming into the market with a soft modem that could potentially disrupt the pricing further," said Lee Simpson, semiconductor analyst at Jefferies. Qualcomm said that it understood the Icera complaint was at "a very preliminary stage" and added that it was reviewing the allegations. "We do note, however, the similarity between Icera's allegations and those in complaints made previously to the EU, which apparently failed to persuade the Commission and were ultimately withdrawn. We believe the new allegations to be equally meritless," it said.
