EU Likely to Charge Apple With Anti-Competitive Behavior This Week

The European Commission will this week bring charges against Apple over concerns that its App Store rules break EU competition law, reports the Financial Times. The charges relate to a two-year-old antitrust dispute with Spotify.

European Commisssion

Margrethe Vestager, the EU's competition chief, will late this week publicly issue charges against Apple over concerns that the rules it sets for developers on its App store break EU law, according to several people with direct knowledge of the announcement.

In 2019, Spotify filed a complaint with the European Commission, alleging that Apple enforces ‌App Store‌ rules that "purposely limit choice and stifle innovation at the expense of the user experience," accusing the company of "acting as both a player and referee to deliberately disadvantage other app developers."

Spotify highlighted that Apple's 30% commission on ‌‌App Store‌‌ purchases, including in-app subscriptions, forces the music streaming service to charge existing subscribers $12.99 per month for its Premium plan on the ‌‌App Store‌‌, just to collect the $9.99 per month it usually charges.

Spotify argues this gives Apple an unfair advantage because it's unable to compete with Apple Music's standard $9.99 per month price within the ‌‌‌App Store‌‌‌.

The Spotify antitrust case is one of several opened by the European Commission into Apple's business practices in June last year. It's not yet known what the EU's charges could involve, but Apple could be forced to pay a fine or make changes to its ‌‌App Store‌‌ business model in Europe to foster greater competition.

Last month, Reuters reported that EU regulators were in the process of finalizing a charge sheet against Apple in related to Spotify's antitrust complaint, while FT's sources warned that the timing of the charge could still slip. Apple has denied allegations of anti-competitive behavior, and said at the time of Spotify's complaint that its rival was using "its financial motivations in misleading rhetoric."

Popular Stories

iPhone 17 Pro 34ths Perspective

iPhone 17 Pro Launching Later This Year With These 10 New Features

Sunday March 23, 2025 10:00 am PDT by
While the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are not expected to launch until September, there are already plenty of rumors about the devices. Below, we recap key changes rumored for the iPhone 17 Pro models as of March 2025: Aluminum frame: iPhone 17 Pro models are rumored to have an aluminum frame, whereas the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro models have a titanium frame, and the iPhone ...
macbook pro blue green

When Will Apple Release the M5 MacBook Pro?

Wednesday March 26, 2025 4:53 pm PDT by
Apple regularly refreshes the MacBook Pro models, and a new version that uses M5 series chips is in the works. Apple just finished refreshing most of the Mac lineup with M4 chips, and now it's time for the M5. Rumors suggest that we could see the first M5 MacBook Pro models this fall. Design There have been no rumors of a design update for the M5 MacBook Pro models that are coming this...
Apple Lumon Terminal Pro

Apple's Mac Site Features Fictional 'Lumon Terminal Pro'

Wednesday March 26, 2025 12:19 pm PDT by
Apple is going all out with promotions for the popular Severance Apple TV+ show today, and as of right now, you'll find a new "Lumon Terminal Pro" listed on Apple's Mac site. The Lumon Terminal Pro is designed to look similar to the machines that Severance employees like Mark S. and Helly R. use for macrodata refinement. The Terminal features a blue keyboard, a small display with wide...
Facebook Feature

Facebook's New iPhone App Feature Turns the Clock Back to 2007

Thursday March 27, 2025 1:59 pm PDT by
In the mid-to-late 2000s, Facebook was all about staying connected with friends and family. However, as the social media platform added new features and grew over time, that core experience began to get drowned out. That changes starting now, according to Meta, which today introduced a new feature that will "bring back the joy" of classic Facebook. Specifically, Meta has redesigned the...
Generic iOS 18

iOS 18.4 Coming Soon With These New Features for Your iPhone

Tuesday March 25, 2025 6:45 am PDT by
Apple is expected to release iOS 18.4 to the general public as soon as next week, following more than a month of beta testing. Apple's website says some iOS 18.4 features will be released in "early April," so the update should be out as early as Tuesday, April 1. Apple this week seeded the iOS 18.4 Release Candidate, which is typically the final beta version, barring the discovery of any...
iPhone 17 Pro 34ths Perspective

iPhone 17 Pro Supports 8K Video Recording, Suggests Leaker [Updated]

Wednesday March 26, 2025 4:06 am PDT by
Update 7:25 pm: Based on comments from our forums, it appears the original Weibo post may have been mistranslated and "8K" actually refers to the high price of the device rather than 8K video recording capabilities. The iPhone 16 Pro currently starts at 7,999 yuan in China. Our original article follows below. Apple's forthcoming iPhone 17 Pro models are capable of shooting 8K video, up...
Foldable iPhone 2023 Feature 1

'iPhone Fold' to Feature Metallic Glass Hinge That Resists Deformation

Thursday March 27, 2025 4:21 am PDT by
Last week, we covered a report claiming that Apple's book-style foldable iPhone (or "iPhone Fold," as we are provisionally calling it here) will use liquid metal hinges to improve durability and help minimize screen creasing. Today, a Chinese leaker provided more details on the properties of this hinge material that help to clarify why Apple chose it for its first foldable device. According...
Generic iOS 19 Feature Mock

Gurman: Jon Prosser's iOS 19 Mockups 'Aren't Representative' of Redesign

Tuesday March 25, 2025 4:47 pm PDT by
The iOS 19 mockup images that leaker Jon Prosser shared today are not representative of the actual iOS 19 design, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said on social media. According to Gurman, the images that are "floating around" are based on "very old builds" or "vague descriptions," and are lacking key features. Gurman says that we can "expect more from Apple in June." Gurman made the same comment ...
iCloud General Feature Redux

iPhone Users Who Pay for iCloud Storage Receive a New Perk

Thursday March 20, 2025 12:01 am PDT by
If you pay for iCloud storage on your iPhone, Apple has a new perk for you, at no additional cost. The new perk is the ability to create invitations in the Apple Invites app for the iPhone, which launched in the App Store last month. In the Apple Invites app, iCloud+ subscribers can create invitations for any occasion, such as birthday parties, graduations, baby showers, and more. Anyone ...

Top Rated Comments

Wildkraut Avatar
51 months ago

> Does what's best for the consumer and for developer
> Gets charged a fine for doing the right thing.

Pretty stupid, EU.
How did Apple FanBoys used to say?
There are enough alternatives out there, I you don't like it, move along.

Same applies here, if Apple don't like the rules of EU market, move along.
Simply as that... hahaha :D
Score: 36 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Wildkraut Avatar
51 months ago

Tell me one tech company that does not in some way deal or support China. Where do you think the components are made? Apple cares more about privacy than others and they have not given me reason to doubt that. The fact that Facebook and others are pissed off lets me know they are on the right track. And Apple has never said they do not access your data they state they do not sell it. They use it to make their services better for the purposes of better products. And to that end. End to end encrypted iCloud backs could be good but you also may have a lot of people lose data for forgotten passwords and what not. And worse than Google. I think not. They are selling your data to companies you have not even heard of before and who knows if those companies are all legit.
Google does not sell your data, they sell Ad “slots” based on your data, but not directly your data. They would be stupid to sell your data, and giving that precious database out of hands. In other words both companies Apple and Google use your data to improve their services the same way, but Apple plays the good guy in public.
Score: 14 Votes (Like | Disagree)
steggerwoof Avatar
51 months ago

How did Apple FanBoys used to say?
There are enough alternatives out there, I you don't like it, move along.

Same applies here, if Apple don't like the rules of EU market, move along.
Simply as that... hahaha :D
And considering there are twice as many people in the EU than the US that's unlikely to happen ?
Score: 13 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Wildkraut Avatar
51 months ago

And considering there are twice as many people in the EU than the US that's unlikely to happen ?
Yep, and we know Apple is too greedy to give up a market.
They are even worse than Google at this, they love to spread Human Rights marketing blah blah, Privacy marketing blub blub, etc. At the same time they support China, and choose to stay in their market, despite knowing whats going on there.
Google (not better at many cases), at least has shown more moral at this one.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeanbaptiste/2019/07/19/confirmed-google-terminated-project-dragonfly-its-censored-chinese-search-engine/?sh=6b2f51f87e84

Apple is a populist and plays the good privacy guy in the public, but they have many many other ways to use your data in an anti-competitive way to create new services, apps, devices, predict trends based on third party apps downloads and access, and kill competion that way, just to name a few.
It starts with webservice logs, appleid activity+login+logs, and goes over to *NOT* End2End encrypted iCloud backups, which they probably scrape though to join that data with other collected services data, data analytics at finest level.

Just to complete the image...
https://reclaimthenet.org/apples-macos-caught-sending-user-data-to-apple/
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/11/apple-lets-some-big-sur-network-traffic-bypass-firewalls/
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-china-games-idUSKBN2950P1
...and probably much more, uncovered yet.
Score: 11 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Wildkraut Avatar
51 months ago

Microsoft have a 30% commission on their Xbox store (where you buy games, films, etc). Sony has the same on the PS store, as does Nintendo.

Spotify seem to only be going after Apple for being Anti competitive…. and Apple are the ones bullying? ?
These are toys, Phones are general purpose devices, deeply involved into social life and other market types. It’s a payment device, and in a few countries even holds your Personal ID, Driver License, or Social Number. Apple is diving into new territories, and they will have to obey the rules.
Score: 11 Votes (Like | Disagree)
iPadified Avatar
51 months ago

> Does what's best for the consumer and for developer
> Gets charged a fine for doing the right thing.

Pretty stupid, EU.
Stupidity has nothing to do with it. They need to test this in court. EC is the watchdog for fair market practice within EU and the must react to this accusation or they break the EU law.
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)