France fines Apple more than $1 billion:
France’s national competition regulator announced on Monday it has fined American tech giant Apple a record €1.1 billion ($1.23bn) for anti-competitive practices after nearly a decade of investigations. The decision comes over Apple’s alleged anti-competitive behavior in its distribution and sales networks.
The authority said that two of Apple’s wholesalers, Tech Data and Ingram Micro, were fined €63 million and €76 million respectively for unlawfully agreeing on prices.
According to the French regulator, “Apple and its two wholesalers have agreed not to compete with each other and to prevent distributors from competing with each other, thereby sterilising the wholesale market for Apple products.”
Expect other European countries to follow suit soon. Pretty much everyone around the world is utterly sick of the unethical and anti-competitive behavior of the US-based tech giants. Their rising competitors are going to clean their clocks over the next decade.