Have you ever had a fine removed? Feels good, doesn’t it? Let’s imagine now that we have a pending fine for more than 10 years and this has an amount of 1,060 million euros and suddenly they take it away from you, surely it would be a good body. Well, this is exactly what has just happened to Intel and the fine that Europe had imposed on it. How have they escaped and why are they innocent after the accusation?
The General Court of the European Union (TGUE) annulled this Wednesday the sanction to Intel for a value of 1,060 million euros that the European Commission (EC) filed in 2009 against the manufacturer of processors -and now graphics- for abuse of dominant position in the microprocessor market.
Precedents and the European Commission
The case eludes a 10-year investigation by Brussels that concluded that between 2002 and 2007, where Intel was specified, it launched practices that impeded free competition. Those of Pat Gelsinger, who at that time had a market share of 70%, created a planning offering discounts to four of the largest equipment manufacturers, specifically Dell, Lenovo, HP and NEC.
These benefited from succulent discounts and priority in chips as long as they are committed to a exclusive sale of X86 processors coming from Intel. Likewise, companies such as Media-Saturn, better known for its chains MediaMarkt In our country, they made a commitment to Intel, agreeing that only equipment provided with their processors would be sold in their large stores. As if that were not enough, Intel, according to this investigation, paid brands such as hp, acer Y lenovo so that in addition they will stop and delay the releases foreseen in equipment that incorporates processors from AMD.
Intel with these actions drowned AMD commercially, notably reducing the competitiveness of Lisa Su’s at that time, by having tied to 4 of the largest assemblers of equipment, as well as one of the large distribution chains at European level for that reason the European Comission The fine was filed by limiting the free market and reducing the offer of the competition with its incentives.
In 2017 the court of Luxembourg, after Intel’s logical claim, agreed with the American manufacturer of processors and ordered the General Court to carry out the pertinent analyzes again. These analyzes concluded that the fine against Intel was based on incomplete data and that what was obtained did not allow it to be legally demonstrated that its actions and discounts affected competition. With it the TGUE partially annulled the multimillion-dollar fine to Intel, but since it cannot calculate the amount of the rest, it keeps what was served for what was eaten and they do not have to pay anything for their actions.
Intel and Europe’s fine: two new FABs at stake
We close the year with half of Europe eager to see where Intel plants its new wafer factories. Countries like Germany, France or Italy sound like the favorites and in December Gelsinger he was even in meetings with high-ranking French and German officials. This action of Intel is a movement by the American to try to stop the evolution of Asia -especially Korea- in the chip manufacturing.
This is not to say that the fact that Intel announces two mega wafer factories with a budget greater than 20 billion of dollars each and with a complete equitation renewal every 5 years, has something to do with the withdrawal of the fine, but for Intel it has surely paved the way for its European project, which we hope will begin to materialize during this year.
