The e-commerce giant Amazon and Tech-giant Apple have been fined around $218 million dollars for allegedly restricting competition around the reselling and marketing of Apple products on the e-commerce giant's marketplace in the country.
Spain's antitrust authority named CNMC has fined Apple with $161million and Amazon with $57 million fine for the same.
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".
On research it is found that the tech-giant was also controlling the advertising spaces on the amazon website in Spain so that the advertisements of the competitive Apple products can be shown to the customers on the site than the rest other companies.
“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.
As a result, 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.
