The Antimonopoly Committee of France, whose economy is considered to be the second power in the European Union, took up the investigation of the U.S. corporation in the country. The official reason – a complaint from the French telecom operators to ” draconian requirements” set kupertinovtsy.
apple- francePo to research firm Gartner, over 2013 cases from Apple in the European smartphone market develop not the best way, for example, show the results of the second quarter market share of 16.8 % , while the previous year it was 18.8 %. On the contrary, its main competitor , South Korea’s Samsung, everything is much better – there is a rise from 41.5 % to 42.6 %. This situation seems to be needed to make Americans more restrain fervor and more attention paid to the competition. But the fact that the iPhone, especially with the release of new models, is probably the most popular device on the market , provoking kupertinovtsy to gamble . Simply put , they continue in spite of discontent with European partners to impose crippling the latest terms and conditions.
And they agree – and where to go ? However, in clear violation of the law and the rules of doing business are not going to go well , and therefore the French telecom operators have taken, and filled up the Antimonopoly Committee of his country pile of complaints. Let the state rein presumptuous overseas capitalists – as reported by Channel BFMTV, authorities launched a large-scale investigation of Apple co-operation schemes and local telecommunications companies. The aim – to identify , if any, violations of antitrust laws , and then it’s up to multi-million dollar fines.
The charges are serious – in the Ministry of Finance of France are studying complaints that kupertinovtsy actually seek to control the budgets of advertising and marketing programs of French companies in general. Make the last purchase prohibitively huge party smartphones and tablets , which are implemented in full unreal. And interfere in the internal affairs and prohibit operators to deal with the products of other manufacturers. Plus imposed by stimulating the growth of sales of iPhone – for each specific model sold smartphone seller relies award from the pocket of the employer.
Control Bureau of the competition, the French equivalent of state antimonopoly service , even in the summer raided the offices of Apple – looking for evidence of the validity of the complaints most operators. At this point , the case is far from closed , and the parallel is more, on operational missions of French online store App Store.
It is worth noting – the Europeans not the first time Apple bring such claims before the European Commission has already investigated the case with the scandalous contracts. Ostensibly , the Americans right and wrong make European distributors to sell their fellow citizens iPhone at any price in the mind-blowing scale.
At least some truth in this is – in Russia is not just at the moment there is no official dealer of Apple. Profitable to sell the iPhone , but according to the rules of Americans do not realistic. MTS and Beeline and Megafon – all trying to work with all kupertinovtsy terminated the contract. The reason is the same – foreign “colleagues” need to purchase millions of smart phones and resell them to the Russians in a few months , although the latter hardly buy a couple hundred thousand a year . And the problem is not lack of development of the domestic market, as it is in principle , selfish policy of Apple, which does not accept compromises.
According to official data from the ” apple” of the company in the first weekend after the start of sales of iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C were sold 9 million units worldwide . For comparison – a year ago, the iPhone 5 has sold much more modest circulation of 5 million copies. It is possible that an investigation of French Control Bureau competition show what actually settle these figures . And then the American corporation waiting for hard times, but it’s fair to say – next in line Google. Control over 70 % of the smartphone market with Android also calls the legitimate suspicions of European authorities .
Read another very interesting article about alternative energy of the Sun, water and air.
