Apple Fined In Taiwan For iPhone Price Fixing 74
Frankie70 writes "Taiwan's Fair Trade Commission has hit Apple with a small fine and warned the company that it may face a more substantial penalty if it doesn't stop interfering with carriers' iPhone pricing and the prices of the plans carriers sell alongside the iPhone. 'Through the email correspondence between Apple and these three telecom companies we discovered the companies submit their pricing plans to Apple to be approved or confirmed before the products hit the market,' Taiwan's FTC said in a statement."
Re:Nice (Score:5, Informative)
And exactly why shouldn't a company be allowed to decide how much its product should cost?
Because its wrong.
You are confusing what Apple sells its devices to resellers for, and what the resellers then sell the devices for.
Apple has every right to determine the first, but has no right to determine the second.
I'm sure that Apple doesnt want to accept the consequences of these resellers being agents of Apple, primary of which is complete liability with regards to the agents actions and behavior. Yet Apple wants them to be agents in every other respect. Thats not how it works, and is why we have anti-trust laws.
Re:"Nice", you say? (Score:4, Informative)
Its funny till you start getting hit with fines for wilfully ignoring their instructions. I recall a similar incident where Microsoft decided to ignore an EU ruling, and got hit with fines in the neigborhood of ~$3million per day of continued infringement.