Spain’s antitrust authority has fined Amazon and Apple a total of €194 million (~$218 million) for unfairly restricting competition around the reselling and marketing of Apple kit and other products on the e-commerce giant’s local e-commerce marketplace. Defending the sanctioned behaviors, Apple claimed its main objectives for the 2018 agreements with Amazon Spain were related to counterfeit goods and safety issues — saying it had had to dedicate significant time and resource to dealing with fakes and safety issues that had remained unaddressed on Amazon’s marketplace leading up to the 2018 contracts. )\n\n\n\n\nIn background remarks the company suggested the 2018 contract had been beneficial to Spanish consumers — claiming it had boosted the range of certain Apple products sold on its marketplace and also greatly increased the volume of sales for new Apple products