Spain antitrust watchdog fines Apple and Amazon $218 million

Spain’s antitrust watchdog, CNMC, fined Amazon and Apple a total of €194.1 million ($218.03 million) on Tuesday for colluding to limit the online sale of Apple and competitor devices in Spain. The two contracts that the companies signed on October 31, 2018, which granted Amazon the status of an authorized Apple dealer, included anti-competitive clauses that affected the online market for electronic devices in Spain.

Reuters:

Apple was fined 143.6 million euros and Amazon 50.5 million euros. The two companies have two months to appeal the decision.

Spokespeople from Apple and Amazon separately said their respective companies intend to appeal the fines.

We reject the suggestion made by CNMC that Amazon benefits from excluding sellers from its market place, as our business model hinges precisely on the success of the companies selling through Amazon,” the Amazon spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

She added that Apple device buyers benefited from the deal, and the number of discounts on iPads and iPhones increased.

Apple said the agreement with Amazon was designed to limit the number of counterfeits sold online. Previously, the company was spending a lot of money and effort to send hundreds of thousands of ‘take-down’ notices to stop the sale of counterfeited devices, it said.

MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote in 2019, “Eliminating counterfeit Apple products on Amazon isn’t illegal.”

Apple has the right to vet Authorized Apple Resellers in order to maintain high levels of service.

Apple obviously wants as much uniformity in, and control of, the sales experience of their products as possible. — MacDailyNews, May 21, 2019

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