Intel receives a new EU fine of 376 million euros for harming AMD for 2009

The European Commission has fined Intel again in an abuse of power case from 2009. Intel paid PC sellers at the time to only sell computers with Intel’s x86 processors and therefore not to sell PCs with AMD CPUs. A European Court previously annulled a fine for this.

Before 2009, Intel paid the parent company of MediaMarkt and Saturn if they would only sell computers with x86 processors from Intel, not PCs with AMD CPUs. With this, Intel wanted to limit AMD’s sales channels and thus sell more CPUs itself. This was against EU law, writes the Commissionfor which the company is fined EUR 376.36 million.

The new fine is the next step in this case, which has been running since 2009. That year, the Commission fined Intel 1.06 billion euros, partly for paying PC vendors to only sell PCs with Intel’s CPUs. However, Intel also received that fine because the company would have given discounts to Dell, Lenovo, HP and NEC if they purchased a large part or all of their x86 CPUs from Intel.

At the beginning of last year, the European Court of Justice annulled this fine, because the investigation into the discounts given to Dell, Lenovo, HP and NEC was not valid. The Court found that a fine for the payments to MediaMarkt’s parent company was justified, but could not determine the fine amount itself. Therefore, the entire fine was annulled at the time.

The fine that the Commission announced on Friday is therefore only based on those payments to MediaMarkt’s parent company. In addition to this new fine, the Commission has also appealed against the Court’s decision.