Japan wants to sue Apple because of the contracts that the American company imposes on mobile phone operators, forcing them to sell the iPhone only under conditions imposed by it. The authorities in Japan would have discovered that the agreements between Apple and mobile phone operators would have allowed it to dominate sales in Japan, to the detriment of competitors.
More precisely, those from Apple would prohibit mobile phone operators from selling stocks of old iPhone terminals in the country, they must be sold in other areas, Hong Kong being one of them. Moreover, Apple asked the operators to give preferential treatment to its terminals, promoting them to the detriment of those of Samsung, for example.
The authorities noticed that although the iPhone 7 and the Samsung Galaxy S7 have the same standard selling price, the iPhone 7 has a lower subscription price than the terminal from Samsung. The same thing happens with other terminals of Apple's competitors, and the situation dates back several years, hence the explanation for the high sales in Japan.
The difference between the prices of Apple subscription terminals and those of Samsung is approximately 50% in the case of iPhone 7 and Samsung Galaxy S7, so the Koreans must have reported the problem to the authorities. Now the authorities in Japan are trying to find out what kind of agreements Apple made and how they can sue it for violating antitrust laws.
"Japan's Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said that NTT Docomo, KDDI Corp and Softbank Group were refusing to sell older surplus iPhone models to third party retailers, thereby hobbling smaller competitors. Apple was not named in that report, but two senior government sources told Reuters that regulators were also focusing on Apple's supply agreements with all three carriers."
The situation in Japan is identical to that in Europe, for example, Apple forcing its European partners to act in similar ways to favor the iPhone. Of course, not everyone respects these indications of the Apple company, mainly because the abusive clauses in the contracts cannot be supported in court, but few deviate from the rules for fear of not receiving small stocks of iPhone terminals when a new model is launched.
