Spain Penalizes Amazon and Apple for Suspected Price Manipulation

Spain’s antitrust regulator, Comisión Nacional de los Mercados y la Competencia (CNMC), has imposed fines on Amazon and Apple amounting to 194.1 million euros (over $218 million) for violating antitrust laws. The penalties are a result of a 2018 agreement between the two companies, which authorized Amazon as a dealer for Apple products but also included alleged anti-competitive terms. The CNMC stated that both companies unjustifiably limited the number of Apple product sellers on Amazon’s Spanish website.

The CNMC fined Apple €143.6 million and Amazon €50.5 million for their alleged role in price fixing based on contracts signed on October 31, 2018. According to the agency, more than 90 percent of current sellers selling Apple products on Amazon have been blocked store after sale. In addition, Amazon allegedly restricted non-Spanish retailers in the European Union from reaching Spanish customers. The online store is also said to have reduced the amount of advertising allowed by Apple’s competitors in consumer search results for Apple devices.

According to the CNMC, as a result, the online prices of Apple devices listed and sold in Spain were higher.

In separate statements to Reuters, Amazon and Apple denied that the deal would hurt consumers. “We reject the CNMC’s suggestion that Amazon would benefit from excluding sellers from its marketplace because our business model depends specifically on the success of companies that sell through Amazon,” an Amazon representative told the news agency today. Likewise, Apple said the deal was about curbing the sale of counterfeits, adding that it had previously spent a lot of money on hundreds of thousands of counterfeit product takedowns.

Companies have two months to appeal the competition authority’s decision. Spokesmen for both companies told Reuters they plan to do just that.