Fine of 194 million to Apple and Amazon for preventing the sale of small distributors

Manzana and Amazon he will have to pay a fine 194.15 million euros for agreeing and enforcing restrictions on market competition in their sale on the line affecting third-party resellers and other brand products, as confirmed by the National Markets and Competition Commission (CNMC).

The regulatory body said in a statement that on October 31, 2018, both tech giants signed two agreements that updated Amazon’s terms as an authorized Apple distributor. They included several clauses that restrict market competition which affected online retail sales of Apple brand electronic products in Spain. For this reason, it orders the cessation of the behavior and fines the accused companies from the Apple group with EUR 143.6 million, and the accused companies from the Amazon group with EUR 50.5 million.

In particular, the companies agreed that only a series of distributors designated by Apple itself can sell products of this brand through the Amazon website in Spain. This agreement has resulted in more than 90% of resellers using the Amazon website to retail Apple products being excluded from Spain’s main online marketplace. In addition, resellers not authorized by Apple to sell their products have lost an important sales channel, to the extent that this website is the vehicle for most online purchases of electronic products in Spain.

Price increase

In this way, the sale of Apple products in the mentioned electronic store was concentrated in Amazon itself, which drastically reduced the competition among resellers of this brand’s products. And also valued a price increase paid by consumers to buy Apple products in the said market, CNMC reveals.

The organization ensures that the most affected sellers were unauthorized Apple resellers, generally small operators who do not have a direct commercial relationship with Apple but sell their products with their consent and who were the most active on the Amazon website in Spain and, therefore, those who have exerted greater competitive pressure on the prices on the said website.

The CNMC considers that these agreements jointly contribute to changing the sales dynamics of Apple products on Amazon’s website in Spain, restrict intra-brand and inter-brand competition, and constitute a single and continuous violation of Article 1 of the Law on the Protection of Market Competition and Article 101 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union , which began with their adoption in October 2018.