Spanish authorities fined a total of more than 30 billion yen for Apple and Amazon to interfere with competition
Apple and Amazon received 194.15 million euros from Spain's independent market competition commission (CNMC) for making it difficult to display competing products of other brands and unreasonably limiting the number of resellers on the Amazon marketplace. (approximately 31.3 billion yen) was fined.
La CNMC multa a Apple y Amazon con 194 millones por restringir la competencia en la web de Amazon en España | CNMC
Apple and Amazon found $218M for 'brand gating' in Spanish antitrust finding | TechCrunch
According to CNMC, since 2018, Apple and Amazon have signed a contract with Amazon as Apple's agent on Amazon.es, the Spanish version of Amazon.com.
More than 90% of resellers of Apple products were unfairly excluded from Amazon.es based on multiple clauses in the contract, one of which is called 'exclusion clause' or 'brand gating'. Amazon.es is an important sales channel for online purchases of Apple products in Spain, so any merchant not authorized to sell Apple products has lost its sales channel.
Since Amazon itself became an agency, it began to conduct direct marketing to customers of Apple products, which significantly hindered the business of resellers. Sales of Apple products in Spain by merchants based in other parts of the EU also dropped, restricting trade between member states, CNMC said.
By selling Apple products almost exclusively by Amazon in this way, there was no competition in the Spanish online market, and the amount consumers paid to purchase Apple products was relatively increasing.
Also, the 'advertising clause' and 'marketing clause' restricted the advertising space for Apple's competing products on Amazon.es. Specific examples of this have been published.
Below are the search results for 'Samsung Galaxy S22'. At the top of the screen is an OPPO advertisement targeted at people who are considering purchasing a Galaxy S22.
On the other hand, if you search for 'Apple iPhone', you will not see ads for competing devices, but ads for Apple products. This was not because rivals did not advertise, but because Amazon restricted the display of advertisements.
CNMC believes that these clauses in the contract are factors that will change the sales dynamics of Apple products in Spain, restrict intra- and inter-brand competition, and comply with Article 1 of the Competition Law (LDC) and the EU Treaty on Functions ( TFEU) concluded that Article 101 was violated and decided to fine Apple 143.64 million euros (about 22.5 billion yen) and Amazon 50.51 million euros (about 7.9 billion yen).
In addition, Apple and Amazon can file an objection to the national court within two months from the day after the notification.
Related Posts:
in Web Service, Posted by logc_nt