The EU Commission on Saturday defended its record-busting anti-trust action against Intel, following a report that it missed evidence that could have boosted the US computer chip giant’s case.
EU antitrust regulators fined Intel a record 1.06 billion euros (US$1.45 billion) in May, claiming the chipmaker abused its stranglehold on the semiconductor market to crush its main rival.
However, the EU Ombudsman is set to deliver a report to the European Commission accusing it of “maladministration,” US media reported.
Commission spokesman Alain Bloedt on Saturday defended the EU action in the case that Intel is challenging, raising the specter of a new antitrust saga between Brussels and a US technology giant after Microsoft’s years of European legal battles.
“The commission can reassure you that it surely respected Intel’s right of defense,” Bloedt said.
The EU’s executive arm however would not comment in detail on an ombudsman’s opinion that had not yet been published, he added.
EU Ombudsman Nikiforos Diamandouros will berate the commission for not formally recording an account of a meeting with a senior Dell executive, who rated the performance of Intel rival Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) as “very poor,” the Wall Street Journal reported.
Such an opinion could imply that Dell chose to buy and use Intel’s chips on merit rather than because they were commercially pressured to do so.
The European Commission, Europe’s top competition watchdog, charged Intel with using illegal loyalty rebates to squeeze rivals out of the market for central processing units (CPUs) — the brains inside personal computers.
The Santa Clara, California-based company dominated the 22 billion euro market for the ubiquitous x86 CPUs with a 70 percent share during the more than five years it was accused of breaking EU antitrust rules.
“Intel has harmed millions of European consumers by deliberately acting to keep competitors out of the market for computer chips for many years,” EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said in May.
The commission said Intel had used wholly or partially hidden rebates to get PC makers such as Acer (宏碁), Dell, HP, Lenovo (聯想) and NEC to buy all or almost all their CPU supplies from Intel instead of AMD.
Intel has defended the rebates, arguing that computer makers approach the company seeking price reductions.
EU antitrust regulators also accused Intel of paying computer manufacturers to halt or put off the launch of products containing microchips competing with Intel’s x86.
The commission ordered Intel to cease any of the ongoing practices that it deemed as breaking EU rules.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
THUGGISH BEHAVIOR: Encouraging people to report independence supporters is another intimidation tactic that threatens cross-strait peace, the state department said China setting up an online system for reporting “Taiwanese independence” advocates is an “irresponsible and reprehensible” act, a US government spokesperson said on Friday. “China’s call for private individuals to report on alleged ‘persecution or suppression’ by supposed ‘Taiwan independence henchmen and accomplices’ is irresponsible and reprehensible,” an unnamed US Department of State spokesperson told the Central News Agency in an e-mail. The move is part of Beijing’s “intimidation campaign” against Taiwan and its supporters, and is “threatening free speech around the world, destabilizing the Indo-Pacific region, and deliberately eroding the cross-strait status quo,” the spokesperson said. The Chinese Communist Party’s “threats