Apple, Amazon fined $218 mn in Spain for restricting competition

LONDON: Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) have been fined a total of $218 million in Spain for allegedly restricting competition around the reselling and marketing of Apple products on the e-commerce giant's e-commerce marketplace in the country.Spain's antitrust authority named CNMC fined Apple $161 million and Amazon around $57 million.

The country's competition watchdog found that both the companies "unreasonably restricted the number of resellers of Apple products on the Amazon website in Spain".

The tech giants also "limited the advertising spaces where competing Apple products can be advertised on the Amazon website in Spain".

"Finally, they limited the possibility of Amazon directing marketing campaigns to customers of Apple products on its website in Spain to offer them competing products from other brands," the authority said in a statement.

Now, both Apple and Amazon have agreed to include a series of clauses in the contracts that regulate the conditions of Amazon as an Apple distributor that affected the sale of Apple products and other brands on the Amazon website in Spain.

According to the watchdog, more than 90 per cent of the resellers who had been using the Amazon website in Spain for the retail sale of Apple products were excluded from the main online market in the country.

"Sales of Apple products through the Amazon website in Spain by sellers based in other EU countries were reduced, thus limiting trade between member states and there was an increase in the relative prices paid by consumers for the purchase of Apple products in said online market in Spain," the antitrust authority noted.