The American internet companies Apple and Amazon have to pay a total of almost 200 million euros in Spain for violating competition law when selling Apple products. The two companies had made agreements to curb competition.
Apple and Amazon have included a number of clauses in their contracts for the sale of Apple products, the Spanish competition authority CNMC announced on Tuesday. This has also hurt consumers.
The agreements therefore go back to October 2018. So only certain dealers selected by Apple could sell Apple products through Amazon in Spain. In addition, the advertising opportunities of Apple’s competitors on the Amazon site are limited by agreement. Consumers would have had fewer opportunities to discover other brands. According to the authorities, Apple would therefore have to pay 143.6 million euros, Amazon 50.5 million euros.
Amazon is appealing
An Amazon spokeswoman said the company plans to appeal because it disagrees with Spain’s competition authority CNMC’s decision. “We also disagree with the competition authority’s claim that Amazon benefits from banning sellers from our store.”
Amazon’s business model is based on the success of the sellers – most of them are small businesses. In addition, Spanish customers of the agreement with Apple benefited from an offer that has more than doubled in the past four years.
In Italy, Amazon paid a much higher fine
The two American companies have been fined several times in Europe for cartel violations in recent years. For example, Amazon in Italy had to pay a fine of about 1.1 billion euros in 2021 and Apple in France about 372 million euros in 2022.
The European Union has passed the Digital Markets Act (DMA). Stricter rules have been in place for large companies since May: for example, Apple is no longer allowed to give preference to its own payment service in the App Store; Amazon may not improve the products it sells on its trading platform; and Google is no longer allowed to pre-install certain in-house software applications on Android smartphones.
Source: Krone
I’m Ben Stock, a journalist and author at Today Times Live. I specialize in economic news and have been working in the news industry for over five years. My experience spans from local journalism to international business reporting. In my career I’ve had the opportunity to interview some of the world’s leading economists and financial experts, giving me an insight into global trends that is unique among journalists.
