BRUSSELS (AFP) -- EU competition regulators launched antitrust action against Qualcomm on Monday after receiving complaints that the U.S. microchip company had abused its dominant market power.

The European Commission said it had received complaints from leading mobile phone and chipset makers accusing Qualcomm of licensing its rights to third-generation mobile phone technology on unfair terms.
Tech giants Ericsson, Nokia, Texas Instruments, Broadcom, NEC, and Panasonic lodged the complaint.
Qualcomm's case is frequently compared by antitrust experts to Microsoft's epic battle with the European Commission, which is also centered on the abuse of a dominant market position.
""This initiation of proceedings does not imply that the Commission has conclusive proof of an infringement,"" the European Union's competition watchdog said in a statement.
""It only signifies that the Commission will conduct an in-depth investigation of the case as a matter of priority,"" it added.
Qualcomm holds rights to the CDMA and WCDMA standards for mobile telephone communications, earning the company handsome licensing fees.
Although Qualcomm developed the CDMA second-generation standard in the 1990s, other companies invented the WCDMA third-generation technology in 1999 on the back of the earlier standard, ensuring Qualcomm royalties also for WCDMA.
""The alleged infringement concerns the terms under which Qualcomm licenses its patents essential to the WCDMA standard,"" the Commission said.
""The investigation will focus on the issue of whether the licensing terms and royalties imposed by Qualcomm are, as alleged by the complainants, not fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory,"" it added.
The Commission said it had no fixed deadline for completing the investigation.