Qualcomm came under even more pressure last week when the European Commission imposed a fine of €997m for “abusing its market dominance in LTE baseband chipsets”. Ironically, this was the result of a complaint brought by Apple, which is engaged in a vicious legal battle with Qualcomm over patent fees – but the EC’s issue is with Qualcomm giving Apple exclusive deals in order to keep its business. This highlights just how serious the current legal stand-off is for Qualcomm, especially if it accelerates any moves by Apple to increase the number of modems it buys from Intel, or even to develop or acquire its own. In the past, the EC discovered, it has been ready to go to extreme…