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The Courts Apple

Apple Fined Record $1.23 Billion in France for Price-Fixing Scheme (venturebeat.com) 43

Posted by msmash from the watchdog dept.
France's competition agency has announced a $1.23 billion fine against Apple, claiming the tech giant conspired with distributors of gadgets such as the iPad to fix prices and limit competition. From a report: The decision came from France's L'Autorite de la concurrence and is its largest fine ever. The agency said Apple tightly restricted supplies and effectively required distributors such as Tech Data and Ingram Micro to charge the same prices for devices that could also be purchased through its own online and physical retail stores. "It is the heaviest sanction pronounced against an economic player, in this case Apple, whose extraordinary size has been duly taken into account," said agency director Isabelle de Silva in a statement. The agency also respectively levied fines of $84.7 million and $69 million against Tech Data and Ingram Micro for their roles in agreeing to terms that hurt other smaller distributors.
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Apple Fined Record $1.23 Billion in France for Price-Fixing Scheme More

Apple Fined Record $1.23 Billion in France for Price-Fixing Scheme

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  • How much profit Apple made with that crime scheme?

    For comparison.

    I'm looking into if it is a viable business venture. :P

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      I wonder if it's more than $1.23 billion in France alone, could well be. Hopefully other European regulators will look at similar deals in other countries.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by AHuxley ( 892839 )
        Invest in the EU nations get huge EU fines... welcome to the EU.

        • Invest in the EU nations get huge EU fines... welcome to the EU.

          Apple don't invest in the EU, they don't even really pay tax there.

          They do however have to abide by the laws of the countries they do business in. In this case the regulator thinks they've broken some laws and wants to fine them.
          If Apple thinks they have a case they will appeal to the French courts, because that is how the civilized world works, no matter what Fox News tells you.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Good point. Maybe we should just cancel all laws relating to companies to encourage investment.

    • Why is this not a crime punishable by jail time?
      • because billy gates is NOT in jail time ...for PowerPoint

      • In the US there are generally two legal categories.

        If you go to Walmart and steal a $300 mobile phone, and are caught, you will be processed through the criminal justice system for the ill-gotten $300. Even if you didn’t succeed. Under criminal law, you will be punished by the government, up to and including being locked in a cage.

        If a large corporation knowingly overcharges millions of customers, receiving tens of million of ill-gotten dollars, the matter is civil. Generally the customer must expe

  • Apple has controlled their market since .. always (Score:5, Informative)

    by ITRambo ( 1467509 ) on Monday March 16, 2020 @11:28AM (#59835540)
    When my small shop, in the US, wanted to become authorized Apple sales/service a couple of decades ago they were quite nasty about it. They wanted us to purchase a minimum of $25,000 of Apple gear every quarter. Since we're rural, that was absurd. To this day, we can't and won't repair Apple equipment. Customers with Apple gear have to drive an extra 25 miles to get to the closest authorized Apple repair center. Apple doesn't care about customer convenience, as shown by their attitude about it decades ago. They don't want competition lowering their fixed prices in order to grow business. Apparently, nothing has changed.

    • When my small shop, in the US, wanted to become authorized Apple sales/service a couple of decades ago they were quite nasty about it. They wanted us to purchase a minimum of $25,000 of Apple gear every quarter.

      Many, many companies have "minimums" to become/maintain an "Authorized Dealer" status. Apple is in no way unique in that regard. I doubt that any of those other companies take local population density in regard, either.

  • claiming the tech giant conspired with distributors of gadgets such as the iPad to fix prices

    Doesn't Apple get to set the price of the iPad ?

    • No, Apple is not allowed to specify how much the shop must sells their products for. That is controlled 100% by the shop.

      • Perhaps he was referring to the price Apple sells the devices to retailers. Obviously, Apple controls what they sell it to the shop for, but anything after that is none of their concern. If some shop wants to eat into their own margins or use Apple products as a loss leader to get people in the store that’s not Apple’s concern. The ‘S’ in MSRP is for suggested, so Apple deserves to get hit for this.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tflf ( 4410717 )

          Any retailer who does not have an agreement to undercut Apple's MSRP, and consistently does so, will not have Apple products for very long, at least in North America.
           

    • This is how it works in the US. The manufacturer can dictate the lowest price the seller is allowed to charge. The idea is that fixed pricing is supposed to keep retailers from cut throat pricing each other out of business. It's supposed to keep Walmart from selling iPads at a loss so Best Buy can't have the sales. This is illegal in the UK. There, they let the market dictate the selling price.
      • Got it, thanks.
      • How it actually works [ftc.gov]. A manufacturer can set an MSRP, and can make agreements with its dealer network as best it can, but at the end of the day the price is set at each step in the chain, and there are no legal remedies regarding a dealer selling for less than MSRP. And forcing compliance to MSRP does leave you open to price fixing violations.

    • They get to set the MSRP of the iPad, and they get to set their price to resellers.

      Note that MSRP is an abbreviation for Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price. In Apple's case, it's far more than a suggestion - it's contractual. Basically "you sell for the same price as we do, or you don't fucking sell it." Which, in the old days, the likes of TechData and Ingram Micro would have told Apple to go fuck a duck, but these aren't the late 90s anymore.

  • I'm no Appple fan, but... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by OneSmartFellow ( 716217 ) on Monday March 16, 2020 @11:51AM (#59835630)
    I'm unclear about this.

    If a producer of a product wants that product sold for a specific price, what is wrong with that ?

    Surely they only control the wholesale price, i.e. the price they're willing to sell to distributors

    If they don't want their products sold below a certain retail price, can't they just adjust the wholesale price ?
    • BTW, a quick Google search reveals that Apple's price fixing is no accident, they have been repeatedly prosecuted over the past several decades for exactly that.

      Clearly they're intention is to violate the law until prosecuted.

      Why isn't that criminal conspiracy ?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nashv ( 1479253 )

      RTFA

      Apple published “recommended” prices and then tightly restricted promotional materials a distributor could use. One distributor said if it ran a promotion Apple didn’t like, the company would retaliate by limiting product supply.

      The result limited pricing competition for about half of the retail market for Apple products in France.

  • The idea of MAAP (minimum acceptable advertised price) needs to be prosecuted by more countries for what it is. Price fixing under the thinnest layer of legality. You legally could still sell a product for below the supplier's MAAP, but then the supplier will then refuse to sell to you ever again.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by jdossey ( 172868 )

      Why? Just because you don't like it? If Apple wants to act that way, then just buy a product from some other manufacturer. It would be different if Apple was setting the prices of all smartphones. But if it's just their own products, why should anyone be able to tell them they can't do that?

  • There is a gal with a PhD in molecular biology from John Hopkins, Dr. Jessa Jones, who tried to get an iPhone fixed after one of her kids threw it in the toilet. Apple refused, saying her only option was to buy a new phone. She decided to fix it herself, and did.

    She started a business to fix iPhones and began teaching others how to do it. She has a YouTube channel, "IPad Rehab", showing how.

    https://www.youtube.com/channe... [youtube.com]

    She and Louis Rossmann, who repairs Apple computers, face constant attacks an

  • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Dog-Cow ( 21281 )

      Yes, you are a bull's shit. Apple was restricting supplies to particular retailers, not to the retail market as a whole.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by _merlin ( 160982 )

      You might want to talk to Rolex or Ferrari about that. Plenty of "exclusive" brands manage artificial scarcity to keep the allure.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • There were only about 500 of the LaFerrari coupe made, and about 200 of the open-top version. They sold out almost immediately. They could have easily sold more. The number is kept low to make it ultra-rare and exclusive. They've done this with all their flagship models. Only 399 of the Enzo were made sold out before production started.

          Rolex does weird shit [luxurybazaar.com] with supply to ensure there's limited availability of the more coveted models. They could easily sell more if they didn't insist the dealers sell in cer

  • Apply doesn't have a monopoly on smart phones. I would never buy a "luxury" smart phone either. From anyone.

    Since they don't have a monopoly, why can't they pick the price to sell at? No one has to have an iphone. If you insist on having one, that's your choice.

    To me, this is a good reason to not buy apple products.

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