European Commission confirms supplementary Statement of Objections sent to Intel

The European Commission can confirm that it has sent a supplementary Statement of Objections (SSO) to Intel on 17th July. Refer to MEMO/08/517

In the SSO, the European Commission accuses Intel of three more elements of abusive conduct in order to monopolize the EU market of central processing units (CPUs):

• First, Intel has provided substantial rebates to a leading European personal computer (PC) retailer conditional on it selling only Intel-based PCs.
• Secondly, Intel made payments in order to induce a leading Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) to delay the planned launch of a product line incorporating an AMD-based CPU.
• Thirdly, in a subsequent period, Intel has provided substantial rebates to that same OEM conditional on it obtaining all of its laptop CPU requirements from Intel.

The SSO reinforces the Commission’s preliminary view outlined in a Statement of Objections of 26 July 2007 (see MEMO/07/314) that Intel has infringed EC Treaty rules on abuse of a dominant position (Article 82) with the aim of excluding its main rival, AMD, from the x86 Central Processing Units (CPU) market.