Amazon and Apple have been fined $218 million by the Spanish National Markets and Competition Commission after the antitrust watchdog says they colluded to limit third-party sales of electronics in Spain and drove up the prices of Apple products, the latest in a series of antitrust investigations that have targeted the two companies.
A man is seen looking at the Amazon.com homepage on an iPad on October 24, 2017. Photo by Jaap ... [+]
The two companies in 2018 reached agreements that limit third-party sellers of Apple products advertising on Amazon, suppressing Amazon’s ability to advertise competing electronics to customers of Apple products and limiting free competition, Spain's commission said.
The commission said 90% of third-party Apple sellers were forced off of Amazon as a result of the deal, and prices of Apple products sold online rose, Reuters reported.
Amazon told Forbes customers actually benefited from the agreement with Apple as the catalog of iPhone, AirPods, iPads and Apple Watches more than doubled over the last four years, and Apple told Reuters the agreement was originally designed to limit the number of counterfeits sold online.
Apple was fined 143.6 million euros ($161 million) and Amazon was fined 50.5 million euros ($56.7 million).
A spokesperson for Amazon in Spain said the company plans to appeal the decision; Apple representatives did not immediately respond to request for comment.
This isn't the first time Apple and Amazon have met under the scrutiny of antitrust regulators in the U.S. and Europe. A federal judge in Seattle last month said Amazon and Apple will have to face an antitrust lawsuit that accuses them of inflating iPhone and iPad prices on Amazon, and the Italian Competition Authority fined both companies in 2021 for a similar agreement that restricted the sale of products made by Apple and Beats to a select group of Amazon sellers. Big tech has been under intense scrutiny as antitrust regulators around the world took a closer look at those with dominant market position. The merger of Microsoft and video game developer Activision Blizzard was stalled by the Federal Trade Commission before ultimately getting the go-ahead from a federal judge last week, and the United Kingdom's antitrust regulator, the Competition and Markets Authority, is still considering the deal. Another antitrust case brought by the FTC against Meta claims the company has engaged in “anticompetitive conduct and unfair methods of competition” since acquiring Instagram and WhatsApp in 2012 and 2014, respectively.
Other regulatory action against Amazon in recent years have included a €746 million ($844 million) fine by Luxembourg's privacy watchdog for violating the European Union’s data protection laws and a charge that Amazon uses the data it collects from third-party sellers to compete against them. Earlier this year, Apple was hit with an Italian probe for allegedly forcing third-party app developers to adhere to a stricter privacy policy than it applies to itself.
Apple has a current market cap of $3.02 trillion, the only $3 trillion company in history. Amazon has a $1.37 trillion market value.
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