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Qualcomm hit with $773 million fine in Taiwan for antitrust violations
August 01, 2025
The Taiwan Fair Trade Commission has fined Qualcomm, the San Diego-based chipmaker, NT $23.4 billion for antitrust violations. That works out to around $773 million US. Qualcomm is being fined for the way it prices mobile phone chips and patents in the small, but important East-Asian state that is home to technology companies likeAcer,Asus,HTC, andFoxconn.
According to the ruling, Qualcomm has been violating antitrust rules for at least seven years. In that time it has collected roughly $13 billion in licensing fees from local companies. On its website, the Taiwanese FTC says:
Right now, Qualcomm has a monopoly market status in these mobile phone standards. By not providing products to clients who don’t agree to its conditions, Qualcomm is violating local antitrust laws. According to the Fair Trade Commision, local companies purchased $30 billion worth of Qualcomm’s chips, far less than the fine that was handed down.
So, what does this mean for Android phones? Well, not much right now. This is a pretty small fine compared to the billions of dollars that Qualcomm brings in each quarter. Hopefully we see things change aroundCDMA technologylong term. One of the reasons we don’t see more cheaper unlocked phones support CDMA or networks like Verizon or Sprint is due tothese licensing fees. It’s much cheaper to make a GSM-only phone and the CDMA standard is far less popular outside of the United States.
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