Heena Sharma Blog

  Some of the world’s largest technology companies are complaining to US antitrust regulators about Nvidia Corp’s acquisition of Arm because the deal will harm competition in an area of the industry that is vital to their businesses. Alphabet Inc’s Google, Microsoft Corp. and Qualcomm Inc. are among companies worried about the $40 billion deal and are urging antitrust officials to intervene, said people familiar with the process who asked not to be identified because they weren’t authorised to speak publicly. At least one of the companies wants the deal killed. Nvidia shares fell as much as 3.1 per cent in New York trading on Friday. The acquisition would give Nvidia control over a critical supplier that licenses essential chip technology to the likes of Apple, Intel, Samsung Electronics, Amazon.com and China’s Huawei. UK-based Arm is known as the Switzerland of the industry because it licenses chip designs and related software code to all comers, rather than competing against...

  For months, complaints from tech companies against Apple’s and Google’s power have grown louder. Spotify, the music streaming app, criticised Apple for the rules it imposed in the App Store . A founder of the software company Basecamp attacked Apple’s “highway robbery rates” on apps. And last month, Epic Games, maker of the popular game Fortnite, sued Apple and Google, claiming they violated antitrust rules. Now these app makers are uniting in an unusual show of opposition against Apple and Google and the power they have over their app stores. On Thursday, the smaller companies said they had formed the Coalition for App Fairness, a nonprofit group that plans to push for changes in the app stores and “protect the app economy”. The 13 initial members include Spotify, Basecamp, Epic and Match Group, which has apps like Tinder and Hinge. “They’ve collectively decided, ‘We’re not alone in this, and maybe what we should do is advocate on behalf of everybody,’” said Sarah Maxwell, a...