Russia fines Apple $12.1 million for 'abusing' power in market, favouring own apps

Russia on April 27 imposed a $12.1 million fine on tech giant Apple Inc for “abusing” its dominant position in the market and giving preference to its own applications. Russia’s Federal Anti-Monopoly Service said in a statement on Tuesday that it found the company abusing its position in the iOS distribution market through a series of “sequential actions” that further resulted in a competitive benefit to its own products. The authorities also said that it imposed the company with over 906 million rubles of fine after it ruled favouring a complaint filed by Russian multinational cybersecurity and anti-virus provider, Kaspersky.

FAS said in a statement, “It was found that Apple abused its dominant position in the distribution of mobile applications on the iOS operating system through a series of sequential actions that led to a competitive advantage for its own products and at the same time worsened the distribution conditions for competing products - parental control applications.”

“The FAS also established that the provisions of the Apple documentation contain the unlimited discretion of the defendant, which may lead to restriction of competition in adjacent markets,” it added.

Russia’s fine against Apple came after a new law went into effect in the country earlier this month that demands that smartphones, tablets and computers sold in the country should come with pre-installed domestic software and applications. According to the RTE report, it has been dubbed as an “anti-Apple” law and was introduced by the government to tout Russian tech giants over US’firms. Reportedly, critics have flagged that it is only the latest in a series of attempts by the Vladimir Putin-led government to tighten the state control over the internet.

US Senators blast Apple over market dominance

As Apple appears to be corned by several governments, most recently, United States Senators blasted the officials from Apple Inc on April 21 over the dominance of their mobile app stores and whether both the companies abuse their power at the cost of the smaller competitors. As per reports, the top Senate Democrat, Amy Klobuchar said that Apple ad Google can use their power to “exclude or suppress apps that compete with their own products" and "charge excessive fees that affect competition."

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