Spain’s antitrust regulator CNMC has fined e-commerce giant Amazon and iPhone manufacturer Apple a combined €194.1m ($218.03m) for restricting competition on the Amazon website in Spain.
Apple has received a fine worth €143.6m and Amazon €50.5m.
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In 2018, the two parties signed two contracts that granted Amazon the status of authorised Apple dealer.
The contracts’ anti-competitive clauses resulted in the exclusion of more than 90% of the resellers who were retailing Apple products on the Amazon website in Spain, according to CNMC.
The regulator also said that unauthorised sellers of Apple-branded products on the Amazon website in Spain lost an important sales channel.
In addition, it noted that the concentration of sales of Apple-brand products via Amazon reduced competition between resellers of the brand’s products as well as sellers in other EU countries.
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By GlobalDataThe regulator said in a statement: “The CNMC has fined a total of €194,150,000 to different companies of the Amazon and Apple groups for agreeing and executing certain restrictions of competition in the online market or “market place” of Amazon (www.amazon.es), affecting third-party resellers of Apple products and competing Apple products.”
CNMC added: “The resellers most affected by this clause were Apple’s unauthorised distributors (known as Non-Authorized Resellers), generally small operators who do not have a direct commercial relationship with Apple but who sell their products with their consent and who were the most active on the Amazon website in Spain and, therefore, those that exercised the most competitive price pressure on said website.”
The two companies intend to appeal the decision and have a period of two months to file it before the National Court, Reuters reported, citing their spokespeople.
In an emailed statement, an Amazon spokesperson was quoted by the news agency as saying: “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.”
In February this year, Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service fined Apple Rbs906m ($12.12m) for allegedly abusing its dominant market position.
