Just when Apple and Qualcomm’s fighting used to be in the end over, a new one has begun, this time between Apple and Spotify. According to a document with the aid of Financial Times, the EU’s regulatory physique is planning on launching an inquiry on Apple involving Spotify’s claims of ‘anti-competition’.
According to Spotify, Apple is acting as a gatekeeper of the App Store and uses its power to “deliberately drawback other app developers.” Back in March, Spotify filed an anti-trust grievance towards Apple with the EU the place the track streaming agency argued that Apple forced App Store guidelines that “purposely restriction preference and stifle innovation at the cost of the consumer experience.” Apple, however, did now not take this criticism gently and responded returned via labeling Spotify’s claims as a “misleading rhetoric” and in addition said that Spotify desired all the benefits of Apple’s App save without paying the required fee.
Spotify’s criticism is focusing on App Store’s policy of charging a 30% on App Store purchases, because of this Spotify has to charge its current subscribers $12.99, for its fashionable $9.99 per month while the rest goes as App Store fee to Apple. According to Spotify’s CEO, Daniel EK Apple Music enjoys an unfair benefit over this for the reason that Spotify is unable to fairly compete with Apple Music’s wellknown $9.99 (per month) within the Apple store.
Ek further stated that if Spotify chooses now not to acquire repayments from users with the aid of the App store, then Apple “applies a series of technical and experience-limiting restrictions”. Shockingly, these technical difficulties have also covered “locking Spotify and different companies out of Apple services such as Siri, Apple Watch and HomePod”.
If the EU finds this unlawful then it can force businesses to exchange their commercial enterprise fashions as it did to Google. Unfortunately, investigations such as this can take up countless years to conclude. However, if the selection turns towards Apple then it would possibly make matters hard for the Cupertino giant as EU up to 10% of the company’s world turnover. Furthermore, considering Apple constantly ties down its users in its ecosystem, the place it overwhelmingly favors its own services, Spotify dude to its massive reputation can make the opposition an increasing number of difficult for Apple Music (within the ecosystem) on a playing level field.
