European union

Google is heading to a top European Union court Monday to appeal a record EU antitrust penalty imposed for stifling competition through the dominance of its Android operating system. The company is fighting a 2018 decision from the EU's executive Commission, the bloc's top antitrust enforcer, that resulted in the 4.34 billion-euro (USD 5 billion) fine - still the biggest ever fine Brussels has imposed for anticompetitive behavior. It's one of three antitrust penalties totaling more than USD 8 billion that the commission hit Google with between 2017 and 2019. The others focused on shopping and search, and the California company is appealing all three. While the penalties involved huge sums, critics point out that Google can easily afford them and that the fines haven't done much to widen competition. In its original decision, the commission said Google's practices restrict competition and reduce choices for consumers. Google, however, plans to argue that … [Read more...] about android: Google in court to appeal EU’s 2018 Android antitrust case

Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi Corp said on Monday it is engaging a third-party expert to assess claims from Lithuania 's government that its phones carry a censoring feature. "While we dispute the characterisation of certain findings, we are engaging an independent third-party expert to assess the points raised in the report," a Xiaomi spokesperson said in a statement. The announcement comes after Lithuania's defence ministry urged consumers to throw away Chinese phones last week, following a report published by Lithuania's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) alleging that Xiaomi phones have built-in censorship capabilities. Xiaomi said at the time that its device "does not censor communications to or from its users". Xiaomi did not specify which third-party organisation it was engaging to conduct the assessment. A spokesperson told Reuters it was an organisation based in Europe. In response to the allegations of censorship, the company said it … [Read more...] about xiaomi: Xiaomi engaging expert to assess Lithuania censorship claims

When Nvidia offered $40 billion to pick up British silicon developer Arm a year ago this month, most industry observers knew that the road ahead for the American graphics chip company wouldn't be easy. If you look at a pyramid of cascading intellectual property in the mobile processor industry, Arm sits at the tippy top. Arm provides and updates instruction sets, documentation, rules, and basic designs for high-efficiency processors. Arm has a variety of customer types. Some, like Apple, Qualcomm, and Nvidia itself, use only Arm's instructions sets, rules, and documentation to design their own processors so that their cores will run software written for Arm. Apple has its designs fabricated by manufacturing specialists such as TSMC and Samsung and puts those processors in its own products. Qualcomm has various fabricators that make chips for system vendors to use. Others—Vivo, for example—license Arm cores, but they do most of their own development independently. A third group, … [Read more...] about Nvidia seeking a way to complete tricky Arm acquisition

Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou's extradition lawsuit wrapped up over the weekend, ending a near three-year saga that saw her placed under house arrest for almost the entirety of that period. On the same day, two Canadians who were detained in China for over 1,000 days were similarly released and returned to Canada. Meng was allowed to return to China after she reached an agreement with United States prosecutors to admit to misleading global financial institutions. "In entering into the deferred prosecution agreement, Meng has taken responsibility for her principal role in perpetrating a scheme to defraud a global financial institution," Eastern District of New York Acting Attorney-General Nicole Boeckmann said in a statement . "Her admissions in the statement of facts confirm that, while acting as the chief financial officer for Huawei, Meng made multiple material misrepresentations to a senior executive of a financial institution regarding Huawei's business operations in Iran in … [Read more...] about Huawei CFO and detained Canadians return home following wrap up of extradition charges

Alphabet unit Google has criticised EU antitrust regulators for ignoring rival Apple as it launched a bid to get Europe's second-highest court to annul a record 4.34-billion euro ($5.1 billion) fine related to its Android operating system. Far from holding back rivals and harming users, Android has been a massive success story of competition at work, representatives of Google told a panel of five judges at the General Court in Luxembourg at the start of a five-day hearing. The European Commission fined Google in 2018, saying that it had used Android since 2011 to thwart rivals and cement its dominance in general internet search. "The Commission shut its eyes to the real competitive dynamic in this industry, that between Apple and Android," Google's lawyer Meredith Pickford told the court. "By defining markets too narrowly and downplaying the potent constraint imposed by the highly powerful Apple, the Commission has mistakenly found Google to be dominant in … [Read more...] about Google slams EU antitrust regulators for ignoring Apple