Apple and Amazon are being sued in the US for allegedly raising the cost of the consumer electronics device for which they were responsible by driving away resellers from the latter’s e-commerce platform.
Apple and Amazon sued over iPhone price hike conspiracy
For collaborating with one another to raise the cost of iPhones and iPads, the two tech giants are being sued in a class action antitrust case in the US. In order to accomplish this, both businesses removed almost all other Amazon online store sellers of recent Apple products, including the newest iPhones and iPads. Notably, a January 2019 agreement was the target of the proposed class action in the Seattle federal court.
In exchange for allowing only 7 out of its 600 resellers to continue using the e-retailer’s platform, the lawsuit alleges that Apple gave Amazon a 10% discount on all of its products. As a result, Amazon is now essentially the website’s biggest seller of brand-new iPhones and iPads.
According to the complaint, after the two businesses(Apple and Amazon) made this decision, the cost of some Apple products increased by up to 10% while the iPhone manufacturer concentrated on stabilizing retail store prices.
The complaint states that “exactly the type of activity that Congress established antitrust laws to ban is erecting entry barriers to keep rivals out and raising prices after their elimination.
The issue is resolved. Both businesses have not yet released a statement on this issue. However, just in the third quarter of this year, the combined product revenue of the two companies is anticipated to have exceeded 125 billion US Dollars. Therefore, it is evident that if the alleged collusion were true, both brands would have made billions of dollars.
