Shareholders sue Qualcomm over Snapdragon 810

Shareholders of the American chip designer Qualcomm have sued the company. They are dissatisfied with the way Qualcomm has released the Snapdragon 810-soc and the way the company has been run since 2013.

According to The Register, shareholders believe that the chip designer has done half the work on the design of the Snapdragon 810. In addition, the 64bit mode is said to have been added in a hurry. According to the indictment, the soc had to deal with overheating problems as a result. At the end of 2014, reports came out that the processor became too hot under certain circumstances. Shortly afterwards, it turned out that Samsung would not use the soc in its Galaxy S6 device.

A second subject at the heart of the indictment is Qualcomm’s strategy since 2013. The company is involved in several competition cases. For example, Apple sued the company in January over a dispute over royalties. The most recent development in that case is that Qualcomm claimed damages from Taiwanese manufacturers of iPhone parts.

In addition, the company paid a $868 million fine in South Korea and two investigations into its trade practices are also ongoing in Europe. The US FTC launched an investigation in January into Qualcomm’s alleged misuse of its network chip patents.