EU takes over German antitrust inquiry into Intel

European Commission regulators have taken over a German antitrust investigation into allegations that Intel put pressure on a major electronics retailer to forgo using processors from competitor Advanced Micro Devices.

Germany's antitrust agency, Bundeskartellamt, received a complaint from AMD alleging that Intel had abused its dominant market position by putting pressure on major electronics retailer Media Markt to not sell AMD's chips. Because the Commission found similarities with its existing probe into Intel, it took over the German investigation in late August, Commission spokesman Jonathan Todd said.

"We have liaised with the Bundeskartellamt...and come to a common understanding that it would make more sense if these charges could be dealt with by the European Commission," Todd said. "Bearing in mind that (the suspected actions) seem to belong to a set of practices that is already under scrutiny by the Commission...a range of tactics used by Intel to limit the market share of AMD."

Intel will cooperate with the EU investigation, as it has done over the past five years, said Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy, who added that the company believes its actions are "fair and lawful."

Last year, the Commission raided several European Intel offices as well as offices of companies that manufacture or sell computers.

Other countries have weighed in with their own investigations into Intel's business practices. Earlier this year, the Korean Fair Trade Commission sought more documents from Intel relating to its antitrust investigation into the chip giant.

And last year, Intel agreed to abide by recommendations from the Japan Fair Trade Commission, which had launched its own probe. The recommendations called for Intel to halt its practice of requiring PC makers to restrict the use of competitors' chips in exchange for monetary rebates. Intel accepted the recommendations but disagreed with the facts underlying the allegations.

[Captain_Spock]

Oh! Oh! Here we go again with....

... the "European Commission" going after yet another US company (the US based Microsoft Corporation being the other) - INTEL. Which other US based company will be next one that the "European Commission" will be going after?

[rmiecznik]

That's because...

The US gov't won't do anything about it, because it protects it's own, and treats large Companies differently, because they employ a lot of people and it makes the economy look good and US.

Intel is doing the same thing that Microsoft did and perhaps is still doing, forcing OEMs to only carry their products. 80% of Microsoft's 10.5 billion last year in revenues came from OEM's selling their Windows software only. Notice that Dell, HP and others only offer Windows, and nothing else.

Linux dones't count yet, too small of a pie, but in a long term, it is an attempt by the OEM's not to be told by MS what to do, right now they have no choise and can't really control their own destany as much as they could because of Microsoft.

Any other questions ?

[Jerry Dawson]

Somebody has to do the job

Fact: Wholesale, AMD processors cost around half that of an equivalent INTEL product, which should give them the competitive edge.

It would appear that Microsoft, Intel, and Dell have been working together to leverage a 'corner' on the PC market (having largely lost the server market). A corner is also known as a monopoly.

It would also appear that the US govt. is unwilling to take on either Microsoft or Intel with an anti-trust suit despite the fact that their practices hurt US consumers as much as anybody else, perhaps because of the amounts of foreign income these companies generate.

Consumers all around the world suffer as a result of M$ and Intel's anti-competitive practices and leveraging, so it should come as no surprise when countries take these two corporations to task, seeing as the US govt. is failing to uphold the interests of its own electorate.

Who will be next? Quite possibly Dell, and conceivably Apple.

[MaxRock17]

It's probably ....

... not gonna be European based AMD. After all they filed the anti trust complaint in Germany to bring down US based Intel.

[rmiecznik]

Almost agree

I would leave Apple out of this, they are one of the most creative companies out there, and anything they get, is a direct result of a lot of hardwork and good marketing. They don't force no one to only carry their products.

Apple dones't sell their products via OEMs, they sell it them selfs, so this is different.

If Apple sold their OS like MS did, and has secret handshakes and contracts with OEM, to only have them carry OS X and not Windows, then you could go after them.

I love Apple computer and don't see any problems with them. I love iPod and own 2 as a matter of facr. Apple has done a great job and they deserve whatever they get from iPod and iTunes.

I never buy Music online anyways, and never will, because I collect music and prefer to buy the original disks.

EVeryone who coplains about Apple, is because they are jelious, stop using iTunes and get your self a different product and a different damn player.

[Jerry Dawson]

That wasn't the reason

Apple have what, 5% of the PC market, and are unlikely to get in the same situation as M$ or Intel.

However, I have heard numerous rumblings about the i-Tunes store (which you don't use), re. poor business practices. To be fair, I suspect that i-Tunes mostly serves as a pacifier to the majors in the recording industry rather than promoting sales of the i-Pod, which is surely where the actual money is.

[Pascoli]

Totaly False

Apple forces you to buy their very good hardware if you want to play with their wonderful OS. there is no technical reason why they could not sell the os by itself; instead they chose to bundle it with thier over priced hardware. also they put 3rd party developers at a huge disavantage by bundling apps with the os. anyone remember confabulator?, adobe premiere?...Make no mistake, apple would be an order of magnitude more evil than ms is they were in a dominant position. Steve Jobs has sued his own fans many times before

[matt_parker]

Intel and Microsoft

High pressure tactics are what companies like Intel and Microsoft do because they want to own the market before consumers realize they got a crap product. Do you really think Intel was shocked when they got rocked by AMD? The truth is Intel is behind the ball in R & D and it will take them years to catch up to AMD (if at all). Intel was trying to use the same tactics as Microsoft, spending on "bribery" and advertising instead of quality development, but Microsoft screwed the pooch and drew too much attention to these tactics and left Intel an impossible "window of manipulation". Microsoft is on its way out with Windows if they don't totally rebuild their flawed OS from the ground up. Sun's Solaris 10 6/6+ is absolutely superior in almost every way (aside from driver support). When Sun has more GUIs like Mac OSX, watch out - they are the next Xerox (in recovery terms). ZFS, DTrace and Predictive Self-Healing alone are at least 6-8 years ahead of Microsoft's wet dream! Add "green", v9 Niagara and the soon to be released Niagara II, as an example, and you have a Mike Tyson Donkey Kong punch that companies like IBM are totally underestimating. Sun's whole line of servers, storage and software are stand out!