The Italian antitrust regulator, ACGM has announced that it opened an investigation against Apple and Amazon to ascertain an allegation that both the companies were denying legitimate resellers to buy Apple and Beat products. The regulator said it could undermine the competition and ultimately affect companies and customers.
Apple and Amazon Are Being Investigated by Italian Regulator
Apart from strictly valuing the GDPR, businesses in the European Union have to abide by local competition practises that help small businesses to avoid being exploited by large firms. In one such incident, Italian antitrust regulator, L’Autorit Garante Della Concorrenza e del Mercato has opened an investigation into an allegation made by Italian small and medium businesses.
The sellers here in allege that Apple and Amazon are thwarting them to purchase and resell their products on their web markets. It’s like, Apple and Amazon have involved in an agreement to disallow resellers, who’re legitimate by law but not participating in Apple’s special reseller program, to buy their goods.
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This avoidance, as per the regulator, can have the potential to reduce competition by raising barriers to the outlet of online sales markets to the detriment of unofficial resellers.” The regulator didn’t exactly define how long the investigation would do but said that it’s officials had inspected the local offices of both Amazon and Apple.
This investigation is done as per Article 101 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, says ACGM, and aims at ascertaining the allegation. Apple has been fined 10 million euros earlier by the same regulator for intentionally slowing down the iPhone batteries and making the handsets obsolete! This allegation, if proved, may attract yet another hefty penalty.
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