Apple has been found guilty of price fixing in Russia by the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service (FAS).
The Apple subsidiary in the country was accused of telling 16 retailers to maintain the recommended prices of the iPhone 5s and iPhone 6s. Apple, itself, had not respond with a comment at press time.
The FAS believed that non-compliance to the Apple subsidiary’s requests, may have led to the termination of contracts with the retailers. When the accusation was made, Apple denied that it controlled pricing, telling Reuters that resellers can set their own prices for the Apple products. The FAS confirmed that Apple had stopped its price-fixing practices but did not say whether Apple faces a fine.
In May 2016, the FAS found that Google guilty of using its dominant position to force its own apps and services on users and Google was fined $6m. In November 2016, following a complaint from Moscow-based anti-virus firm Kaspersky, the FAS started an investigation into whether Microsoft abused its powers in the security market with Windows 10.
Analyst Comment
Apple is not new to the issue of price fixing in Europe. The company was involved in a big legal dispute over the issue back in the early 1980’s in the UK with Guestel (if I remember correctly!), a dealer in the UK. Guestel was directly buying Apple 2 computers in the US and grey importing them, substantially under-cutting the ‘official’ UK pricing. Eventually, Apple ended up supplying the company with ‘official’ imports which it sold at significant discounts. (BR).
