South Korea launches a full scale probe into Qualcomm’s operations in the country

South Korea’s antitrust regulator has said that they have now launched a full scale investigation into the alleged unfair market practices mobile telephony technology developers Qualcomm.

The Fair Trade Commission had last month formed a special team to push forward a probe into allegations related to misuse of their dominant position in the mobile telephony technology in the South Korean market.

Qualcomm is a major force in the development of patents for the CDMA technology which is used by mobile service providers. It is the only major alternative to the GSM standard for mobile communications.

This standard is quite popular in USA and South Korean markets. In fact, every mobile phone device sold in the South Korean market includes a CDMA chip for which mobile companies like LG and Samsung have to pay royalties to Qualcomm.

There have been complaints from other technology developers including Broadcom Corp. and Texas Instruments Inc. claiming that Qualcomm was misusing its dominating position in this segment to harm the competition.

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