Italy’s antitrust authority investigating (again) Apple for alleged anti-competitive behavior

The Autorit Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato (AGCM), Italy’s antitrust authority, has opened an investigation into whether Apple and Amazon have engaged in anti-competitive cooperation in the sale of Apple products and Beats headphones, reports Reuters. (Beats Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Apple.)

The group says the investigation was aimed at establishing whether the tech giants reached an anti-competitive agreement to prevent electronics retailers not included in Apple’s official program to sell the products.

This isn’t the first run-in Apple has had with the AGCM. In October 2018, the AGCM fined Apple and Samsung 5 million euros (about $5.7 million) each following complaints they used software updates to slow down their mobile phones, The former was fined another 5 million euro fine for not giving clients clear information on how to maintain or replace smartphone batteries as part of the “Batterygate” brouhaha.

In January 2018, the AGCM began investigating Apple and Samsung for alleged “planned obsolescence” of their products.