France slaps Apple with record $1.22B fine

France's competition authority slapped a record $1.2 billion fine on US tech giant Apple on Monday for anti-competitive behaviour towards its independent retail distributors.

The authority said it found that Apple acted to prevent independent retailers in France from competing on price and abused its economic power over them.

The head of the authority, Isabelle de Silva, said it was "the heaviest fine against a firm" as well as in any case, which also included two of Apple's wholesalers in France who were hit with fines worth nearly $156 million.

The case began in 2012 when one of Apple's independent premium resellers complained about uncompetitive practices that included squeezing off supplies in favour of its own stores.

The authority found three areas of anti-competitive behaviour. 

The first was that Apple and its wholesalers agreed not to compete against one another.

Second, independent retailers "could not without risk undertake promotions or lower prices, which led to an an alignment of retail prices", said de Silva. 

"Finally, Apple abusively exploited the economic dependence of these Premium resellers on it and imposed unfair economic conditions on them that were worse than those for its integrated network of retailers," she added.