Apple Antitrust

Airbnb and ClassPass have claimed that Apple's demand to take a cut of online sales was wrong, reports The New York Times. ClassPass helps users to book classes at local gyms, but due to the global situation, they were forced to move their business online and offer virtual classes instead. ClassPass claims that it received a "concerning" message from Apple stating that a 30 percent...

Apple chief Tim Cook and other big tech CEOs will participate in a rescheduled antitrust hearing on Wednesday. The hearing to be held by the U.S. House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee was supposed to happen on Monday, but it was postponed to avoid a conflict with a memorial service for the late representative John Lewis. Cook is expected to join Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Alphabet/Google...

An antitrust hearing held by the U.S. House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee where Apple chief Tim Cook was set to join other big tech CEOs is likely to be postponed, according to a report on Thursday. The hearing involving Cook, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Alphabet/Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was supposed to happen next Monday, but two sources told CNBC that it was ...

Apple and Amazon are under investigation by Italy's antitrust regulator over allegations that the two companies have been blocking the sale of Apple and Beats devices to resellers in order to stifle competition (via Reuters). The L'Autorit Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato (AGCM) is looking into the allegation, which has been made by legal but unauthorized resellers who could...

Apple CEO Tim Cook, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Alphabet/Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg are all set to participate in an antitrust hearing next Monday held by the United States House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee as part of an ongoing antitrust investigation on competition in digital markets. Ahead of the hearing, the committee spoke with Microsoft president and...

Apple CEO Tim Cook will participate in an antitrust hearing held by the House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee on Monday, July 27 at 12:00 p.m. Eastern Time, the Judiciary Committee announced today. The hearing is part of an ongoing U.S. antitrust investigation that involves competition in digital markets. The hearing, labeled "Online Platforms and Market Power, Part 6: Examining the...

Apple CEO Tim Cook plans to testify in an upcoming antitrust hearing with the U.S. House judiciary antitrust subcommittee, chairman David Cicilline said today in an interview with Kara Swisher. According to Cicilline, Apple CEO ‌Tim Cook‌, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Alphabet (Google) CEO Sundar Pichai, and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos will all appear at the antitrust hearing set to take place in ...

As part of an ongoing antitrust inquiry into Apple's App Store policies, U.S. antitrust regulators are looking into the 30 percent cut that Apple takes from in-app subscriptions, reports Bloomberg. Government lawyers have been meeting with developers over the course of the last several months, and in meetings as recent as last week, developers have been asked questions about Apple's...

Antitrust regulators are currently investigating competition in digital marketplaces, focusing on Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Apple. Microsoft is not involved in the investigation, but Microsoft joined the conversation today when president Brad Smith said at a Politico event (via Bloomberg) that it's time for regulators to take a look at app stores. Smith was careful not to name Apple or...

Apple's App Store fees are akin to "highway robbery," Representative David Cicilline told The Verge in the latest Vergecast episode. Cicilline, who is the Chairman of the U.S. House Subcommittee on Antitrust looking into the App Store agreements that Apple has with developers, spoke to The Verge alongside Basecamp CTO David Heinemeier Hansson, developer of the "Hey" app that Apple rejected...

As part of an ongoing probe of competition in digital markets that involves Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee this week sent a letter to each company demanding to know whether their CEOs will testify in hearings set to take place in July, reports Axios. The antitrust investigators want to know by Sunday whether Apple, Google parent company Alphabet,...

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek today told Bloomberg that he expects Apple to further "open up" in long term following the antitrust complaint Spotify filed with the European Union last year. In the complaint, Spotify said that Apple enforces App Store rules that "purposely limit choice and stifle innovation at the expense of the user experience," and that Apple acts as "both a player and referee to...

France's competition watchdog on Monday fined Apple 1.1 billion euros ($1.23 billion) for anti-competitive behavior in its distribution network and an abuse of economic dependence on its resellers, reports Reuters. At the same time, France's Competition Authority also levied fines of $84.7 million and $69 million against Apple wholesalers Tech Data and Ingram Micro for their roles in the...

The Federal Trade Commission today announced that it has issued Special Orders to Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, Google and Google parent company Alphabet requiring them to report all prior acquisitions not previously reported. In the United States, companies are required to report acquisitions over a certain value to the FTC under the Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Act, while acquisitions under ...

The United States Department of Justice is continuing with its antitrust investigation into Apple and has recently reached out to developers who create apps for Apple's iOS devices, reports Reuters. Suren Ramasubbu, CEO of app development company Mobicip, was interviewed by a U.S. investigator in November and questioned about Mobicip's interactions with Apple. Mobicip makes parental control...

As part of a bipartisan investigation of competition in digital markets, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee today sent a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook requesting that the company provide any documents and executive communications related to its various policies for the App Store, product repairs, and more. The investigation seeks any internal documents or communication involving Apple...

The Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets, or ACM for short, today announced that it will investigate whether Apple abuses its position in the App Store by, for example, giving preferential treatment to its own apps. ACM says the investigation will initially focus on Apple because the majority of anticompetitive allegations it has received from other companies and developers have...

Cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab has filed an antitrust complaint against Apple with the Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service relating to the company's App Store distribution policy. The action comes less than a week after Spotify filed its own complaint against Apple with EU antitrust regulators over the tech giant's "unfair" ‌App Store‌ practices. Kaspersky's complaint is specifically to...

With the intense ongoing legal battle between Qualcomm and Apple, it's easy to forget that Qualcomm is also facing an FTC antitrust lawsuit for using anticompetitive tactics to remain the main supplier for baseband processors for smartphones. The FTC hasn't forgotten, though, and FTC lawyers are in a Northern California courtroom before well-known judge Lucy Koh, who also presided over the...

Customers who purchased a Kindle e-book between April 1, 2010 and May 21, 2012 may be receiving a credit from Amazon this morning as the retailer continues distributing funds from an antitrust lawsuit levied against Apple back in 2013 by the United States Justice Department. Emails were sent out to eligible customers in the United States this morning, and Amazon has also set up a website that...