Japanese FTC Investigating Apple's Partnerships With Suppliers
Japan's Fair Trade Commission is investigating Apple to determine whether it pressured Japanese suppliers and abused its position of power, thereby violating antimonopoly rules, reports Reuters.
The FTC in Japan surveyed Japanese companies and found that Apple had signed contracts forcing its partners to provide free technology and know-how for parts manufacturing.
When one of the companies called Apple's contract an infringement of intellectual property rights and demanded a revision, Apple allegedly threatened to end the business relationship between the two companies.
Apple has not commented on the report, but this is just one of several antitrust investigations that have been launched in recent months.
In South Korea, Apple has been accused of offering local carriers unfair iPhone contracts that require them to pay advertising and repair costs, and in Europe, the European Union is investigating Apple's App Store policies following an accusation from Spotify that said Apple uses its App Store to deliberately disadvantage other app developers.
In the United States, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission is investigating the impact of Apple's sales agreement with Amazon on independent resellers, and the U.S. has also launched a broad antitrust review into major tech companies.
Popular Stories
The redesigned MacBook Air with the all-new M2 Apple silicon chip will be available for customers starting Friday, July 15, MacRumors has learned from a retail source. The new MacBook Air was announced and previewed during WWDC earlier this month, with Apple stating availability will begin in July. The MacBook Air features a redesigned body that is thinner and lighter than the previous...
Apple today began selling refurbished Mac Studio models for the first time in the United States, Canada, and select European countries, such as Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Spain, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.
In the United States, two refurbished Mac Studio configurations are currently available, including one with the M1 Max chip (10-core CPU and 24-core GPU) for...
The M2 MacBook Pro has started making its way into customers' hands and we're learning more about how it performs in a variety of situations, but all eyes are really on the upcoming M2 MacBook Air which has seen a complete redesign and should be arriving in a couple of weeks.
Other top stories this week included a host of product rumors including additional M2 and even M3 Macs, an updated...
Fifteen years ago to this day, the iPhone, the revolutionary device presented to the world by the late Steve Jobs, officially went on sale.
The first iPhone was announced by Steve Jobs on January 9, 2007, and went on sale on June 29, 2007. "An iPod, a phone, an internet mobile communicator... these are not three separate devices," Jobs famously said. "Today, Apple is going to reinvent the...
There appears to be a serious bug in macOS High Sierra that enables the root superuser on a Mac with a blank password and no security check. The bug, discovered by developer Lemi Ergin, lets anyone log into an admin account using the username "root" with no password. This works when attempting to access an administrator's account on an unlocked Mac, and it also provides access at the login...
Top Rated Comments
They continued manufacturing for a coupe of more models, but during this period was asked by Apple for details on its manufacturing process. They trusted Apple (silly maybe, but this place is run by a guy in his 60’s, being a craftsman all his life. Not a businessman), but turns out by the following year a large Chinese manufacturer had somehow figured out how to make the part that had been impossible for them, Apple quickly cut ties with the Japanese manufacturer and went with what was now a cheaper part made in China. I was disgusted at the time.
The Macrumors article might be talking about this particular case.
Who among us is shocked by this? :D