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After Qualcomm paid China about $975 million in a case of antitrust, South Korea stated investigating antitrust practices against Qualcomm earlier this year. While investigation in South Korea is continuing, this week European Union has started a probe in antitrust practices of Qualcomm.
The competition commission of European Union comprising 28 nations has started a probe to determine Qualcomm's practices of using its dominance to undercut competitors. Qualcomm is suspected of setting predatory pricing for some chipsets and offering unfair rebates to customers to keep away competitors. Whatever may be the case, Qualcomm is going through antitrust investigation in regions one after another. Which will be the next region?
Someone's got to pay to bailout Greece, Pawan. I'm having trouble keeping things straight - is QCT rapidly losing share to MediaTek, Spreadtrum, Intel, and the rest of their merchant competitors, and the vertical self-suppliers, such as Samsung and Huawei, or are they stifling competition unlawfully? It's hard to accept that both are true.
That's a very valid point. Qualcomm has been losing market share to competition and they say it's undercutting competition by unfair practices. It's a contradiction. People can throw more light on it if they know any insiders stories, why it is so?
Typically when a single company reaches 70% market share in some industry segment, then regulators start to scrutinize their trade practices to see if they are violating anti-trust standard practices. All of the big companies have gone through this ordeal at one time or another: Intel, Google, Amazon, Dell, Qualcomm, etc.
The unusual aspect about the EDA marketplace is that the big 3 (Synopsys, Cadence, Synopsys) combined hold about a 90% market share between them, leaving only a paltry 10% market split between dozens of small, scrappy companies. The smaller players either want to grow bigger or get acquired by the big 3. EDA started out in the 1980's with this same configuration, known as DMV (Daisy, Mentor, Valid), and has remained a troika-dominated industry.
Daniel, You brought an interesting point about EDA. In this space, we have seen patent infringement cases, but not antitrust. Imagine if Cadence and Mentor would have united, then there would have been only two big EDA players. Actually, I must recall about Synopsys acquisition of Avant too, that when it began its journey to occupy the top spot.
But anyway, can we even imagine any antitrust case in EDA space. I guess not, because you see who are the consumers. EDA revenue is minuscule against the whole semiconductor industry revenue even though its a prime enabler for semiconductor design and even fabrication now a day.
The unusual aspect about the EDA marketplace is that the big 3 (Synopsys, Cadence, Synopsys) combined hold about a 90% market share between them, leaving only a paltry 10% market split between dozens of small, scrappy companies. The smaller players either want to grow bigger or get acquired by the big 3.
Despite the protestations of some smaller players, I think it's safe to assume they wouldn't have got VC cash unless they had "sell to highest bidder of C/M/S" in their business plan
There are a few that managed without VCs but in the end they all seem to end up as part of one of the big 3.
Mike, I would agree to this. Sooner or later, it's small players' wish to get acquired by any of the big three. During Magma days, for sometime, we used to hear "Magma has grown too big to be acquired", but then was acquired by Synopsys.
I can't imagine anyone growing to the extent of these big 3 to make a fourth one. Also, I don't think there would be any antitrust in EDA space, who would complain about antitrust? The consumers of EDA are happy to get their tools at say, below 10% of their total spend?
