It"s true. The European Union has thrown a new set of anti-trust allegations at Intel. Earlier this week, rumors swirled that the EU would spring into action, adding charges to a European Commission investigation against Intel that"s been going since 2001. Now the extra charges have arrived, with EU regulators accusing Intel of three new bits of "abusive conduct" designed to wound AMD"s place in the x86 processor market.
"First, Intel has provided substantial rebates to a leading European personal computer (PC) retailer conditional on it selling only Intel-based PCs," the EU said in a statement. "Secondly, Intel made payments in order to induce a leading Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) to delay the planned launch of a product line incorporating an AMD-based CPU. Thirdly, in a subsequent period, Intel has provided substantial rebates to that same OEM conditional on it obtaining all of its laptop CPU requirements from Intel."