Intel have to cough-up $1.45 billion in fine ... holy crap

European antitrust officials have fined Intel for its past actions which has been deemed anticompetitive.

The European Commission fined the chipmaker some $1.45 billion, after having found guilty of antitrust violations in the market for PC microprocessors.

Of course with that kind of amount, Intel is appealing. Still if the appeal fails, it looks like half of Inter’s year profits will be used in paying up the fine.

The decision by the EU was based on Intel’s pricing practices during 2002 to 2005. That’s the period where Intel was facing stiff competition from AMD in the desktop and server space.

Intel’s crime is that based on internal e-mails and testimony from OEMs (Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and NEC), it is found that Intel provided companies volume rebates that prevented AMD from expanding its market share.

Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini official statement was, “There has been absolutely zero harm to consumers. Intel takes strong exception to this decision. We believe the decision is wrong and ignores the reality of a highly competitive microprocessor marketplace.”

Currently Intel dominates the personal-computer chip market with share estimated at 81.9 percent at the end of 2008, while AMD held 17.7 percent.