Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) has brought a lawsuit against structures related to Apple over IPhone price coordination, it reported Monday.
Advertisement
Russia’s federal antitrust body has opened a case into possible price-fixing by Apple Inc. and some Russian smartphone retailers, making the Cupertino, Calif., company the latest US tech giant to draw attention from Russian regulators.
It said that an investigation had showed that resellers had set identical prices and kept them at that level for a certain time period, including for other models.
According to a press release from the nation’s antimonopoly authority, Russian Federation has seen signs of price-setting coordination among resellers, “which became a reason for fixing of the same retail prices for the smartphones”.
Apple said it not did not have any comment. The Service believes that these identical prices are a result of coordinated price-setting by Apple group of companies, which led to setting “recommended” prices on products as “obligatory”.
Advertisement
In September 2015 Russia’s antitrust authority found US Internet giant Google guilty of unfairly keeping rival services off Android mobile devices. The two sides are in negotiations aimed at reaching a settlement.
