Hasta La Gadget!

Hang around these pages long enough and you’re bound to come across Pantech, the South Korean purveyor of everything from giant 1080p handsets down to… giant 720p handsets. Samsung has noticed this rising star too and, so says Yonhap News, has now made a $50 million investment in the smaller company in return for a 10 percent stake. Implicit in that is that the Korean government has allowed Samsung’s ever-expanding influence to infiltrate a potential rival, since Pantech is now the No. 3 phone maker in that country and only Qualcomm and a state-run bank possess larger stakes than Samsung’s. As a result, the acquisition could have an anti-competitive aura to it — but then, Pantech has actually been struggling of late, not least with large debts, and it has relied on big backers to bail it out.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

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Via: The Next Web

Source: Yonhap News

Europe’s second-highest court has finally denied Microsoft’s 2008 appeal of its 899 million euro ($1.35 billion) EU antitrust fine, while reducing the award to 860 million euros ($1.07 billion). If you can’t remember that far back, Redmond was hit with the penalty for delaying information about its operating system to rival companies, impeding their progress in competing with the software giant. It’s not known if a further appeal is possible, but we suspect that the company won’t give up if it’s got any options — it’s not exactly pocket change we’re talking about.

Court upholds EU antitrust decision against Microsoft, reduces fine slightly to $1.07 billion originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Jun 2012 05:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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