On Monday, Apple was slapped with a staggering fine of 1.84 billion euros ($2 billion) for violating European antitrust laws. The EU said the company “abused its dominant position” by forcing Spotify and other music streaming apps not to tell customers they could save money if they subscribed outside the App Store.
“This is illegal and it affects millions of European consumers,” EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager told a news conference. European users do not have “the freedom to choose where, how and at what price they buy music streaming subscriptions.”
Apple has a competing music service, which makes its policy particularly egregious in the eyes of regulators, but the problem is broader. For years, companies in the digital economy have complained about Apple’s “app store tax”, the company charges a 30% fee on purchases made in its App Store. Apps are not allowed to tell users that they can avoid paying if they subscribe using a web browser. Therefore, new customers who download apps such as Spotify and Netflix You won’t find any information on how to subscribe. These companies don’t want to charge iPhone users extra fees and can’t cover the cost themselves, but Apple threatens to ban them if they give you details of where to pay.
in a Press release, Apple criticized the EU, claiming that the application market is highly competitive and its policies are beneficial to the world. “This decision was made despite the Commission’s failure to find any credible evidence of consumer harm,” the company wrote. Apple went on to suggest that the fine was related to Spotify being a European company. “The primary advocate and biggest beneficiary of this decision is Spotify, a company headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden,” Apple wrote.
“This decision sends a powerful message – no company, not even a monopoly like Apple, can abuse its power to control how other companies interact with their customers,” Spotify said in a statement. statement. “This is a fundamental concept of the free market – customers should know what their options are, and it should be the customer, not Apple, who decides what to buy, where, when and how to buy it.”
Epic Games, the developer of “Fortnite” recently lose court case Regarding this issue in the United States.However, the EU is more developer-friendly and will soon require Apple to allow users access alternative app store. Apple maintains a 30% fee to cover the cost of security processes necessary to keep users safe.