The French antitrust authority has imposed a record 1.1 billion euro fine on Apple for anti-competitive behavior towards its retailers. The French authority said it found that Apple acted to prevent retailers in France from competing on prices and abused their economic power over them.
The French Antitrust therefore accused Apple of having conducted "an agreement within its distribution network" and of "abuse of economic dependence on its independent retailers", the stores defined as Premium. "It is the heaviest penalty ever imposed" by the authority for what is considered a "particularly serious" practice, says a statement from the competition authority chaired by Isabelle de Silva. At the same time, two French wholesalers from Apple, Tech Data and Ingram Micro, were also fined a total of 140 million euros for anti-competitive agreements. The French Antitrust has identified three main areas in which the US giant has implemented anti-competitive behavior.
First of all, "Apple and its two wholesalers - explained de Silva - have made an agreement not to compete with each other" and also prevent distributors from acting according to the rules of competition, "thus sterilizing the wholesale market for products Apple ". Secondly, "the distributors called Premiums were not able to carry out promotions or price reductions without risk, which led to an alignment of the retail prices of all Apple's integrated distributors and of the independent Premium distributors". Finally Apple "has abused the economic dependence of Premium dealers and imposed unfavorable economic conditions on them compared to those of its integrated dealers". The case arose in 2012 when one of the independent retailers of the Cupertino giant, the eBizcuss website, had denounced Apple for unfair competition, abuse of a dominant position and abuse of economic dependence. Among the behaviors banned is that of delivering less and less products to the retailer to be destined for their Apple stores instead.
