Ericsson has obtained a surprise visit from Chinese authorities who have established an antitrust investigation against the Swedish seller.
China’s economy regulator started the investigation over alleged complaints against Ericsson’s intellectual property licensing procedures.
An Ericsson spokesperson stated:
“Ericsson will collaborate fully with this investigation.
We permit our industry-leading patents portfolio FRAND (honest, moderate, and non-discriminatory) provisions and requirements and have been dedicated to those FRAND principles”
The impromptu visit was conducted amid rising global worries over China’s incumbent telecoms vendor Huawei.
Concerns about Huawei’s alleged connections with Beijing have been directed by the US that asserts the telecoms giant introduces a national security threat for it along with its allies.
Before this year, Huawei’s CFO Meng Wanzhou was detained in Canada on a US warrant for faking a subsidiary named Skycom wasn’t related to Huawei so as to flout sanctions against Iran. Beijing known for Wanzhou’s immediate release and threatened Canada with’serious consequences’ if not.
Roland Paris, a former foreign policy advisor to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, had a powerful rebuke:
“Maybe because the Chinese country controls its own judicial procedure, Beijing occasionally has trouble understanding or thinking that courts could be independent at a rule-of-law state.
There is no use in pressuring the Canadian authorities. Judges will pick.”
As of 2018, Ericsson dethroned Huawei since the world’s biggest telecoms infrastructure supplier. Ericsson took the crown for the first time in 2 decades as its international market share increased 2.4 percentage points to 29 percentage, based on IHS Markit. Huawei, meanwhile, dropped 1.9 points to 26 percent.
The antitrust analysis launched against Ericsson is thought to be the first against a foreign telecoms business in China because the case against US chipmaker Qualcomm.
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