Spain fines Apple, Amazon with $218mln for collusion in items sales
2 Min Read
As per Spain's antitrust watchdog, 90% of the third-party sellers of Apple items, prior to renewing the Amazon-Apple distribution deal, were forced off Amazon’s platform.
-
Amazon company logo seen on the facade of a firm's building in Schoenefeld, near Berlin, Germany, on March 18, 2022 (AP)
The US tech giants Amazon and Apple were fined a combined sum of 194 million euros ($218 million) by Spain's competition watchdog on Tuesday for collusion in products sale.
The two companies reached an agreement to prohibit the selling of Apple devices on Amazon's Spanish websites by third-parties resellers, "which restricted competition," the regulator stated in a statement.
According to the terms of a 2018 agreement between the parties, only specific resellers chosen by Apple were permitted to sell Apple items on Amazon.es, it further added.
"Over 90 percent of resellers who used Amazon's website in Spain to sell Apple products were excluded from Spain's main online market," the statement said.
The action "drastically" lessened rivalry amongst Apple product resellers on Amazon's Spanish marketplace, it was stated.
Read: Amazon; 1st US firm to challenge EU digital regulations
The cost of Apple products that are sold on Amazon increased as a result. Amazon and Apple each received fines of 50.5 million euros and 143.6 million euros, respectively, from the authority.
Following the discovery of several fake Apple items, the firms stated at the time that they had come to an agreement to assure that all Apple products offered for sale on Amazon were authentic. Apple declared it would appeal the decision of the regulator.
"To protect users from security, safety, and quality risks created by counterfeit products, we have rules in place that have effectively reduced counterfeiting," a company spokesperson told AFP.
In recent years, Europe has punished tech titans like Apple and Amazon multiple times for breaking competition regulations.
In December 2021, Italy fined Amazon 1.1 billion euros for abusing its dominating market position, while in October 2022, France fined Apple 371.6 million euros.
