Apple’s 1.1 billion euros antitrust fine slashed by French court

APPLE won a 728 million euros (S$1,022 million) reduction to the record 1.1 billion euros penalty it was hit with in 2020 for anti-competitive agreements with two favoured distributors.

The Paris court of appeals reduced Apple’s total fine on Thursday (Oct 6) to about 371.6 million euros, an official at France’s antitrust watchdog said by phone, without providing details on the reasoning of the judges.

The agency, Autorite de la concurrence, said it’s considering an appeal ruling at France’s top court.

“We would like to reaffirm our desire to guarantee the dissuasive nature of our penalties, especially when it concerns market players of the calibre of,” Silicon Valley firms, Virginie Guin, an official at the Autorite, said.

A lawyer for Apple in France didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

At a hearing last year in the appellate case, Apple accused French regulators of bending antitrust rules “for political objectives” when they doled out the record-breaking fine as part of a campaign to crack down on tech giant dominance

When it dished out the fine in 2020, the French agency said Apple conspired with two wholesalers - Tech Data and Ingram Micro - in a move that thwarted wholesale competition for non-iPhone products such as Apple Mac computers. The duo were also slapped with fines of 76.1 million euros and 63 million euros.

France’s competition arm has kept a close eye on Silicon Valley firm in recent years. Last year, Google was fined 500 million euros for failing to follow an order to thrash out fair deals with news publishers. BLOOMBERG