Apple suspended all its product sales in Russia last year. Credit: Michael Gaida / Pixabay.

Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) has fined tech giant Apple RUR906m ($12.12m) for allegedly abusing its dominant market position.

Citing FAS’ Telegram channel, Reuters reported that Apple had tried to gain a competitive advantage by using its iOS operating system to distribute apps.

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In a statement, the FAS said it had found Apple ‘guilty of abusing its dominant position on the market for iOS applications’.

The antimonopoly service initially determined Apple’s activity in August 2020 and later ordered the company to eliminate provisions that allowed it to remove third-party apps from its App Store.

The FAS’ intervention came after a complaint from cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab, whose Safe Kids application had been rejected by Apple’s operating system.

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the issue.

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The company previously disagreed with the FAS’ ruling and appealed the decision at various stages, but each appeal had been unsuccessful.

Last month, the FAS fined Apple $17.4m for violating anti-monopoly legislation.

The fine came after Apple was alleged to have forced iOS app developers in Russia to use the company’s payment tool in their apps.

Apple suspended all its product sales in Russia last year in response to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. It has also reduced its Apple Pay service in the country.

In October last year, the regional administrative court of Lazio, Italy, cancelled antitrust fines imposed on Apple and e-commerce giant Amazon.

Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato (AGCM) gave the two firms a €203m ($201.9m) fine in 2021 for alleged anti-competitive cooperation in selling Apple and Beats products.

The fine was reduced to €173.3m due to a ‘clerical error’ in the first calculation, before being cancelled after Lazio TAR ruled the AGCM had not given Apple and Amazon enough time to defend themselves.