France has announced that they are fining Apple $1.2 billion for anti competitive sales practices, the fine is being levied against Apple by the Autorité de la Concurrence which is the French competition Authority.
As well as Apple being fined some of its distribution partners which include Tech Data and Ingram Micro have also been fined.
“During this case, the Authority deciphered the very specific practices that had been implemented by Apple for the distribution of its products in France (excluding Iphones), such as the iPad,” said Isabelle de Silva, President of the French Competition Authority, in a statement. “Given the strong impact of these practices on competition in the distribution of Apple products via Apple premium resellers, the Authority imposes the highest penalty ever pronounced in a case (€1.24 billion). It is also the heaviest sanction pronounced against an economic player, in this case Apple (1.1 billion euros), whose extraordinary dimension has been duly taken into account. Finally, the Authority considered that, in the present case, Apple had committed an abuse of economic dependence on its premium retailers, a practice which the Authority considers to be particularly serious ”.
As yet there is no response from Apple and whether they will challenge this fine, it could impact how they run their business in France in the future.
Source TechCrunch
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