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Tuesday, 11 December 2018

Competition watchdog gives Apple 60 days to end ‘anti-competitive’ restrictions in Egypt

Competition watchdog gives Apple 60 days to end ‘anti-competitive’ restrictions in Egypt: The Egyptian Competition Authority (ECA) has given global tech giant Apple 60 days to end restrictions on parallel imports by its authorized resellers. As we noted yesterday, the authority alleges that Apple is violating the Competition Act by barring its regional distributors from selling to its Egyptian distributors has limited “intra-brand competition,” which the ECA takes as seriously as competition among rival companies. The ECA will take legal action against Apple and its regional agent ABM if the practice isn’t wound-down by then, Masrawy reports, citing a statement from the Official Gazette.

Apple is not the first high-profile international company the ECA has gone after: Uber and Careem have been on the receiving end this year of sharp warnings against a (so-far unconfirmed) merger the authority has claimed would harm competition.

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