{"id":2927,"date":"2019-09-13T12:47:59","date_gmt":"2019-09-13T12:47:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dekuzu.com\/en\/?p=2927"},"modified":"2020-02-18T16:35:07","modified_gmt":"2020-02-18T16:35:07","slug":"commission-opened-investigation-into-broadcom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dekuzu.com\/en\/2019\/09\/commission-opened-investigation-into-broadcom.html","title":{"rendered":"Commission opened investigation into Broadcom"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">The European Commission has opened a formal antitrust investigation to assess whether Broadcom may be restricting competition through exclusivity practices, in breach of EU rules. The Commission intends to impose interim measures during the investigation with regard to TV and modem chipsets markets.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\"><!--more--><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Broadcom is the world&#8217;s largest designer, developer and provider of integrated circuits for wired communication devices. It is a global leader in a number of markets, including:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<li><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\"><strong>systems-on-a-chip<\/strong>, which are chipsets combining electronic circuits that constitute the \u201cbrain\u201d of a set-top box or modem. As such, they are among the most important components within these devices and are essential to bring the television signals and connectivity to consumers&#8217; premises.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\"><strong>front-end chips<\/strong>, which are hardware components that translate analogue inputs into digital outputs, and which can then be processed by a system-on-a-chip.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\"><strong>WiFi chipsets<\/strong>, which are hardware components that enable set-top boxes to deploy wireless local area networks.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Components for so-called <strong>central office\/head end equipment<\/strong> to provide high speed data connections.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">The Commission has gathered information indicating that Broadcom may be implementing a range of exclusionary practices in relation to these products.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">These practices may include (i) setting exclusive purchasing obligations, (ii) granting rebates or other advantages conditioned on exclusivity or minimum purchase requirements, (iii) product bundling, (iv) abusive IP-related strategies and (v) deliberately degrading interoperability between Broadcom products and other products.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">As a result of concerns relating to these alleged practices by Broadcom, the Commission has decided to open a formal investigation. In parallel, the Commission has also issued a Statement of Objections seeking to impose interim measures. This sets out the preliminary conclusions of the Commission&#8217;s investigation, which are that:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<li><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Broadcom is <strong>likely to hold a dominant position<\/strong> in various markets for the supply of systems-on-a-chip for TV set-top boxes and modems.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">certain agreements between Broadcom and seven of its main customers manufacturing TV set-top boxes and modems contain exclusivity provisions that may result in those customers <strong>purchasing systems-on-a-chip, front-end chips and WiFi chipsets exclusively or almost exclusively from Broadcom<\/strong>.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">the provisions contained in these agreements <strong>may affect competition and stifle innovation in these markets<\/strong>, to the detriment of consumers.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">The Statement of Objections preliminarily concludes that an interim measures decision may be indispensable in this case, to ensure the effectiveness of any final decision taken by the Commission at a later date.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">In this case, the Commission found that the alleged competition concerns were of a serious nature and that Broadcom&#8217;s conduct may result in the elimination or marginalisation of competitors before the end of proceedings. The envisaged interim measures would therefore apply until the Commission concludes its assessment on the substance of the case. More information is available on the Commission&#8217;s competition website, in the public case register under the case number <a href=\"https:\/\/ec.europa.eu\/competition\/elojade\/isef\/case_details.cfm?proc_code=1_40608\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">AT.40608<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The European Commission has opened a formal antitrust investigation to assess whether Broadcom may be restricting competition through exclusivity practices<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dekuzu.com\/en\/2019\/09\/commission-opened-investigation-into-broadcom.html\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Commission opened investigation into Broadcom<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-eu","category-competition","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dekuzu.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dekuzu.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dekuzu.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dekuzu.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dekuzu.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2927"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.dekuzu.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2927\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2928,"href":"https:\/\/www.dekuzu.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2927\/revisions\/2928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dekuzu.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dekuzu.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dekuzu.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}