The European Commission says Intel has engaged in monopoly abuse to lock its competitor AMD from accessing new customers. Intel has ten weeks to respond formally to the charges, which could ultimately lead to fines running to hundreds of millions of dollars.
The commission said Intel had given substantial rebates to PC manufacturers for buying their x86 processors and that the company paid the manufacturers to either delay or discontinue making products that used AMD processors.
It said Intel also made below cost bids for business in accounts where AMD was a competitor.
The commission said each of the three types of behaviour were both anti-competitive and against the law, but added the combination of the three showed an anti-competitive strategy that damaged both AMD and the market.
“The Commission also considers at this stage of its analysis that the three types of conduct reinforce each other and are part of a single overall anticompetitive strategy,” it said.
Intel senior vice-president and general counsel Bruce Sewell said the company rejected the charges and welcomed the chance to address them.
“We are confident that the microprocessor market segment is functioning normally and that Intel's conduct has been lawful, pro-competitive, and beneficial to consumers,” Mr Sewell said.
“While we would certainly have preferred to avoid the cost and inconvenience of establishing that our competitive conduct in Europe has been lawful, the Commission's decision to issue a Statement of Objections means that at last Intel will have the opportunity to hear and respond to the allegations made by our primary competitor,” he said.
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