EU Commission fines Apple over €1.8 billion over abusive App store rules for music streaming providers
ec.europa.eu
The European Commission has fined Apple over €1.8 billion for abusing its dominant position on the market for the distribution of music streaming apps to iPhone and iPad users (‘iOS users') through its App Store. In particular, the Commission found that Apple applied restrictions on app developers preventing them from informing iOS users about alternative and cheaper music subscription services available outside of the app (‘anti-steering provisions'). This is illegal under EU antitrust rules.
And Apple released a letter that sounds petty and greedy.
Apple’s answer is fair. IF THERE WAS A WAY FOR SPOTIFY TO BE DOWNLOADED WITHOUT THE APP STORE
Either that or just don't directly compete with them. Without Apple Music no one would have complained about it.
But you can't establish a monopoly and leverage it to charge your direct competitors a high fee.
To be fair, Apple's position in the digital music market predates all of the streaming apps. They may not have gone all in on Apple Music until after Spotify started taking off, but when it came to music, Apple devices were synonymous with them for a very long time.
The problem is they created a marketplace with the App Store, allowed competition in, and for way too long we have all kind of collectively accepted the fact that because it's their platform there allowed to have special privileges over everyone else on it.
With the EU is doing is recognizing that these devices are not niche, they're not game consoles, they are devices that every single person has, and this is a marketplace that every person is active in. It is far too large for Apple to be allowed to have that kind of privilege.
It has nothing to do with what's fair to Apple because regulating capitalism properly should not be about fairness to all parties equally. It should be about balancing the scales and leveling the playing field.
To be honest: I am not so worried about the app store – the majority doesnt care anyways. Its in my opinion far more important that Apple and Google aren't able to leverage their monopoly into other areas, similar how Microsoft did so with Windows and Internet explorer.
Either ditch iMessage Apple Music, apple TV, etc completly or force apple to give their competitors an equal paying field, meaning no costs to use the app store, no default App and no free promotion.
How very much like a gatekeeper to their users their argument is.
"Their" is the keyword here, they think they own the users
That's because Spotify doesn't owe you anything. If I release a piece of software for Apple, Android, Linux, Windows, etc., I don't owe these OSes anything for that. Apple makes plenty of money selling hardware, that's good enough for them.
These delusional bastards really need a few slaps around their heads to get this concept to sink in.
I can see an argument for owing something for hosting the app in the App Store, but certainly not 30% of what every user pays or whatever ridiculous amount Apple charges. Price it like hosting a file on S3, perhaps.
Perhaps! But only if they allowed third party app stores. Because as it stands right now, they're basically inventing a cost that they pass on to developers, and then rewarding themselves handsomely for the cost that they would have never needed to pay if they allowed others to compete in this area. It's still a tactic they could not get away with if they were not a monopoly.
Hell nah. They cannot be the sole gatekeepers, alternative app stores that are outside of Apple's control need to exist.
You already pay to host your app in the app store.
And the thing is, that if the app is so popular, it gets installed a lot. Which means it only improves their devices.
Apple and app developers are a symbiotic relationship. Both need each other in order to function. Yet Apple is consistently taking a bigger piece than they should.
Damn that's petty. They're like a 5 year old child that got their toy taken from them
They're used to being treated like God's special little tech company here in the states, so of course they're going to throw a fucking tantrum when faced with a regulatory body that actually treats them as they should be treated.
"Mah, but I helped spotify! Wah"
That's a
paddlinanti-trust forced breakup!The beatings will continue until
moraleanti-consumer practices improve.Lmaooo
"Spotify doesn't even pay us!!!"
Edit: omg its so tone deaf, the pot calling the kettle black:
"In short, Spotify wants more. "
Once more, lmaooooo
They're getting punished for keeping the users in a golden cage, and they are mad that they might have to give some of that power away. You can tell by the fact that not a single paragraph actually addresses the reason for the fine. The EU doesn't give a damn how many times you flew engineers to Stockholm, this is about the conditions in which iOS operates that hurt both developers and users. But we already knew that Apple doesn't give a fly about users, it's money and nothing else for them. “Spotify doesn't pay Apple” oh cry me a river.
Oh noooooo, Apple is only making most of the money, instead of all the money 😭
Eat shit and die, Apple
It’s as if Ford wanted a dividend of all contractors revenue that use a F150.
Good metaphor, and their argument is "but we are also paying the gasoline". Still sounds like slavery with extra steps.
And the devs are already paying $100/year for said fuel.
And it’s so utterly ignorant of WHY the fine was issued. This isn’t about a competitors market position, it’s about Apple using its own dominant market position to push its own service. Using a monopoly to create another monopoly is anti-competitive.
I am wondering if it's really true, that Spotify pays nothing to Apple. If my information is correct every app provider needs to have at least one active Apple Developer subscription (in the case of Spotify there is probably far more than just one account involved). If it is true that Spotify pays nothing to Apple the only possibility is that Apple invited them to bring their app to iOS and granted them free access.
I know 99 USD is not what Apple is after, but it seems dishonest to not disclose this.
They’re just bitter that Spotify is leading the market and not Apple Music and they crybaby because of that. They’ve been bullying Spotify from the beginning and there has been bad blood on both sides for years. Apple has not made it easy for Spotify, why would Spotify give them any more money? They could have worked together, allowing HomePod and Siri to control Spotify and other cross integrations then that would have maybe been a reason to share revenue. But that’s kinda like The Little Red Hen here.
That’s on Spotify, HomePods have been able to stream from other music services for years: https://screenrant.com/apple-homepod-supported-music-services-how-many/
It's very much not on Spotify. It supports services apple decided aren't competing with Apple Music. Look at all the things missing, as your article points out.
It's crazy how much bullshit Apple can pull, and even semi educated people will come to their defense blaming other people for apples failings.
So, Apple's in the wrong because Spotify didn't add the Siri music API?
https://9to5mac.com/2023/09/21/ios-17-play-spotify-music-on-homepod/
https://www.techradar.com/audio/speakers/apple-homepod-finally-gets-hands-free-spotify-thanks-to-this-ios-17-workaround
Like, I get it: the internet has a hate boner for Apple, and in a lot cases it's justified. But it's 100% on Spotify for this one.
And coincidentally YouTube, Spotify, and Amazon Music, all of Apple Musics competition, just all happened to not implement this? All of Apples competition just decided to not add a pretty critical function to the people of that ecosystem? When they all do it in Google's?
Yeah, I don't buy that. At all. Sure the API might be there, but you know who gatekeeps those APIs? Apple. This smells a lot more like Apples fued with Google over turn by turn directions bullshit. Especially when we can see how blatantly hostile to Spotify Apple is willing to be.
It seems a lot more likely that Apple is holding that API over their heads and refusing to allow access to it, than it does that all their Apple Music competition just happens to have all conveniently forgotten to implement a pretty core feature in Apple's ecosystem, while remembering to do it in Googles.
YT Music
https://www.techradar.com/audio/audio-streaming/your-apple-homepod-finally-supports-youtube-music-heres-how-to-set-it-up
Tidal
https://9to5mac.com/2022/04/21/tidal-is-the-latest-music-streaming-service-to-add-siri-integration-heres-how-it-works/
You were saying?
Wait, you still can't use HomePod/Siri to control Spotify? How the fuck does this company continue to exist? Why do people put up with their fucking garbage?
The only service available on HomePod to voice command is AppleMusic. For Spotify, you can AirPlay from your phone’s app like a Bluetooth speaker but you can select a song by voice. Only play pause and volume and only when you have your phone available for that.
Yeah, that's really really fucking stupid.
I mean, in the sense of billions of dollars, having a few developer accounts is nothing. From apples side, they're making it sound like Spotify and others are pissed they can't charge users directly through apples apk store without paying a commission. That would be something to collapse the apple store, steam, and Google play store, if everyone just started going around helping to pay for the platform they want to sell on.
It reads like a child throwing a temper tantrum...
Doesn’t it‽ it’s nuts how bad it sounds.
Nice interrobang!
I made a keyboard shortcut on my phone to type ‽ when I type ?!
... so that Apple fans can identify with it.
I'm confused now. What is a "reader app"?
Spotify wants to make subscriptions an app functionality and Apple restricts that to it's own payment system - and the alternative they provide is external websites?
Why the heck is it called a "reader rule" and "reader app"?
IIRC it's because it comes from before when Apple was sued over charging 25-30% of all eBooks sales while pushing iBooks.
See: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/12/eu-investigating-whether-publishers-conspired-with-apple-on-e-book-pricing/
It was a while ago though so hard to find good sources now.
This is some of Apple's own terminology. It applies to any application who's main purpose is to serve up audial, visual or text-based media.
Apple allows these apps to access existing accounts via apps but not create new ones.
That was a very funny joke apple made!
😡
Seeing horrible actors like apple getting fined gives me a nice hit of dopamine.
So if/after Apple's appeal is declined, Spotify - the driving force of this EU investigation - can sue Apple for damages with additional cost to Apple.
Not just Spotify. If I’m reading this judgement correctly, any developer who was materially impacted by these anti-steering provisions can sue Apple. This could be the beginning of an unprecedented wave of legal action against Apple in Europe. The tricky part is proving damages.
Yes. I singled out Spotify because they were the driving force on the EU investigation, and are big enough to invest into it. But like you say, it's open to anyone.
1.8 billion is around 2% of their last year's net income. At least it's a bit better than the insignificant wristslaps companies tend to get.
Global net income, yes. But it is 5% of the income from the EU. As much as I dislike Apple, the fine seems to be reasonable. I do want to see it bumped up if they keep on with their horseplay.
For a middle class person, that’s equivalent of being sued for €1000, with a good chance of getting away with €100 even when losing. When will fines for big multinationals ever be adequate?
According to this, the fine includes a punitive damage:
Still not enough in my opinion, but hopefully if this sticks, future damage awards will be even higher. In any case, there will be a lot more fines and regulations coming down on Apple into the future (thanks in large part to the DMA), so even though this is just a single instance, they will hopefully add up pretty significantly in the coming years.
$1.8B is quite a chunk, and the EU is not shy about levying further fines if the behaviour continues.
It's less than 0.5% of their annual global revenue. It's nothing for a company like Apple.
It's not company threatening, that's for sure. But that's big enough to show up on their annual report, and pull their profit margin down a point or two. That is very much enough to get their attention.
Based on Statista, Apple profit from EU was 36B in 2023. The fine in this case amounts to 5% of their profit from the region. This is something that will impact the company's decisions.
Or they will fund more infrastructure development in the EU. It's still just March.
While I do agree that the fine could be higher, this is not like a US regulatory lawsuit. In the EU, fines have to be paid immediately, and Apple can appeal if it wants and may receive some of the money it paid back. Apple doesn't get to drag it out, and there are no out of court settlements that usually get the fine amount down.
RIP El Risitas. 😭
So doesn’t Spotify pay them the 100 dollars a year to be a developer? So Apple says they get nothing for from Spotify for developing the platform and tools, but they’re outright lying. And if the 100 isn’t enough increase the price.
Apple just seems like a crying baby in this letter.
$100 top Apple is literally nothing. So are they technically lying? Yes. But in all actuality $100 means nothing to them.
There’s a LOT to complain about Apple, but this is just semantics.
It's very indicative of the culture though. That people pay hundreds of dollars a year just for the privilege of using their products is taken for granted.
In case anyone is wondering where the money is going: The EU budget. The EU doesn't really get to keep it though because membership fees will be lowered by that amount next year so the actual windfall goes to member state budgets.
Fair enough.
EU, I belive in you!
Apple have been getting so many giant fines that it makes me think the EU have really just found their own way of taxing them. Which I'm in favour of.
Good guy EU!
Nice to see a reasonably sized fine. In the US it would be like 5 million and they'd spend 10 times that fighting it in court and still not affect their profits for the month.
It's only reasonable if they earned 1.8 billion or less from it.
Otherwise they'll just do it again.
Not necessarily, it could be that if they put the work into something else instead they would've made more when you account for the fine, so it could still not be worth it compared to alternatives.
Good.
Apple abusing its monopoly? Well I'd never!
Woah, eat shit Apple
Spotify should have handled their issues with the app store rules but just not making an IOS app. If the biggest music streaming service in the world didn't work with iPhones maybe Apple would have had to reconsider some things.
They can't just not have an app... They don't have that much leverage over other music streaming services
Conversely, not being on a platform with a very considerable amount of their current userbase could cost them massive amounts of subscribers, and possibly allow competitors to take their place.
nice
Will apple pay it? 🤷♂️
They (cant just|just cahant) quit Europe
im done with europe now
Well, when Tim Apple says he's done ya gotta take his word for it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Hey a decent fine
I wish the EU would just ban Apple altogether and be done with it! No more sales of anything Apple.
Close all the stores, both local and online, stop selling accessories, stop selling macs, iPads, TV etc.
Let current device owners use it until it breaks and then recycle it.
End of story. That company is just poison. The apple logo suits them - it's the poisonous apple given to snow white!!
In what world is there where less competition has been a good thing for the consumer?
Apples lock in is worse for consumers than any "competition" they provide. There are enough other brands to foster competition.
Plus don't forget you Americans banned Huawei devices because they were a threat to Apple.... Under the guise of "spying" with zero evidence thereof...talk about eliminating the competition
Wait, so you’re saying to ban Apple but then on the other hand you’re upset about Huawei devices being banned?
Apple isn’t the only cell phone maker in the USA so I’m not sure why you think Apple was the one who banned Huawei. That’s a conspiracy theory and I don’t use those to make my arguments and I don’t think others should as well.
Tim Cook meets Donald Trump and a few weeks later Huawei is banned. I mean, it's obvious. Huawei was on its way to become the #1 selling brand worldwide.
I didn't say I was ok with it but I'm saying if they can do it to Huawei they can do it to Apple as well ...
The USA, Canada, Mexico, Japan, Australia and Europe don’t use Huawei.
It’s not the conspiracy you think it is.
One of the things in this list is different from others
Lol. These are all US allies.
Not anymore, but my 3 previous phones were all Huawei.
We can dream
😊
Wet dream of euro communism, get rid of any powerfull competition that keeps messages e2e encrypted and won't install spyware on their hardware. Talk with evil corporations like google and microsoft to enforce one digital id, then presinstall spyware on every android and windows os to be able to login to internet.
"Hurr durr, communism is anything I don't understand"
Regressivist scum shouldn't be allowed in public.
Apple was already evil when even Microsoft wasn't.
IBM was evil before Apple and Microsoft was evil. What's your point ?
Apple's still evil ^_^
At least you know from start what you sign up for, not find out about it after 10 years transition from "Don't be evil" to doing mostly evil stuff.
Actually they too had somewhat different propaganda 10 and 20 years ago, partially aimed at geeks etc, however weird that may seem now.
I agree that they were and are aiming for minorities, like their logo was a rainbow for decades. They do it to give some sort of exclusiveness to the brand by being inclusive.
At lest they're consistant for me and don't change their minds to much over the years. They are now forced to make changes because government lobbying against them what I'd say is more evil than everything on this planet. For example maybe I don't want to use USB-C, maybe I want to sit naked in my house build from shit, eating peanut butter from my ass in the middle of nowhere with my own solar panel but government bans me from doing it because some people say it's bad for you. More bad than stuff I'm allowed to do like buy bleach and drink it.
Well I got what I paid for and I wish all people get that feeling and stop forcing other people to use something because they think it's better to do it their way. I want it my way - like Frank Sinatra once said.
But they do. Say, they were pretty supportive of people storing actual files locally and opposed to subscription models. Now it's different.
And then they were kinda supportive of FOSS (loud about MacOSX being a Unix, forking KHTML). That changed.
And they of course like to claim they don't spy on you, but they just spy as much as they need.
They also benefit quite a lot from governments supporting their claims about rounded corners.
OK.
Yeah, well nobody's perfect, as long as they don't waste my time and I don't see ads based on what I wrote in my messages I can use them. I don't have time to install custom OS everytime my android phone breaks or compile my own chromium because every chromium based browser spies on me more or less. It's all about sacrifice money or time. If open source software will stop wasting people time and start automating stuff people will switch and they will switch in no time. Like look yahoo->google or myspace->facebook. 2-3 years those companies can be gone or mostly rely on corporate - like they're seeing it and facebook and google is trying to switch to corporate customers as fast as they can because they know they can't keep up on consumer market, they're mostly done here. Regular people don't care about rounded shapes or where their files are, they want get shit done so they don't spent so much time on it. If someone creates gui that enables them to do it and have open source product begind the scenes there is no point to not to change the story. But for now I don't see it.
Lol. Apple is at the HEART of communism and NWO. It is BIG BROTHER. That's why their devices are locked down - to lock you in...
Don't forget Apple complied with Chinese Communist government to give them access to users iCloud accounts and also banned apps Chinese government doesn't like. Meanwhile Google is still banned in china because they refused to censor the internet.
Plus on android I don't have to log into anything Google and can install open source apps to me hearts delight, with zero spyware or even install a different OS. Can't do that with apple stuff.
Rethink your world view.
And you what, read minds that you know what people want and who rules the world ? You praise that company can't protect their business and government that can enforce any company to do anything government want. You know who was doing that before, opressing companies that don't do what government wants ?
You're supporting government making decisions about how people need to live by punishing companies and not managing to maintain free market and support small business. Those like you that think that it's good to punish people by taking money from them are the worst.
The difference between apple and android is that apple is sole producer of both software and hardware platform if you like it or not and it's protecting it's IP. If you don't like apple products nobody is enforcing you to buy them or to use them. It's only a feeling of missing out that drives your anger. If apple got 0.5% of market would anyone brag about company having their both hardware and software platform closed ? Does anyone brags about nintendo not allowing everyone to install anything on their console ? But no you want to punish all people who use apple products because you hate them and they didn't do anyting wrong beside don't care about what you think and have a free will to make their own decisions.
You hate people that use apple because they made decision to use apple product. That's racism, facism or mental disability. Go see the doctor.
Are you on drugs or something bro? I don't hate anyone. If anything I feel sorry for apple customers because they are being abused and don't even know it.
You should read up on Richard Stallman and the ideas of Libre Software/Free Open Source Software.
Then you will understand how bad Apple really is towards its users and why everyone should be using Linux and open source software.
Siemens Mobile, Alcatel, Ericssson, Nokia, Psion - where are those phone manufacturers, where are those companies selling their tech right now and why their main market is not in EU ? Symbian OS, where is this open source operating system ? You don't see what globalists are doing because you're delusional, shout open source and you are sold whatever and whoever is behind it. Books are not real life. I can't wait for chinese companies take over every automotive brand in EU after EU destorys their automotive like they destroyed their mobile phone manufacturers, maybe this would wake up people.
Many of these companies still exist but do other things. The biggest open source successful project is Servers - much servers run Linux. After that the next most successful open source is Android - the best selling mobile OS on the planet. That's really my friend....
First thing is that Android is not open source. It's open core. Second thing go make android phone without signing NDA with Google, try to convince factories to sell you parts so you can make a mobile phone and wait until they say they don't want to be removed from Google official list.
Oh those companies do different things now so they're cool ? What things they do ? Siemens Mobile renamed and owned by Chinese, Alcatel licensed to TCL - Chinese. You're bragging aboout China being bad, but look those companies do different things they're good, they were forced to sell their business to China so they're good now.
It's all good, it's great. Great because you can install your linux. Very soon only on old hardware because they won't sell you new one without spyware and drm inside but well you're good. You can install things, but you can't install them on Playstation, you can't install them on Nintendo, on your coffe maker, on your washing machine, on your owen, on your car or anywhere you want. You can install things only where they allow you to do it and you're happy with that. LOL
I didn't say China was bad. I said Apple was bad.
And you can make a very good Android phone with AOSP. You won't have Google services but you could make your own app store like Huawei and Samsung have.
So China is good. Nice to hear that, at least I know with whom I am writing. What's next command comrade ?
I never said China was good either. I just said Apple are being jackasses.
Newsflash: there is no such thing as a good government or politician. They are typically all scumbags.
Seems Apple is following in their footsteps
There is difference between for profit company responsibilitires and government responsibilities. What EU did is in my opinion as an Apple user - they saw shit laying and they said let's spread this shit all over the people that use those products. That's what money penalty is and you're claiming it's fine and moreover you're claiming that products that I legally bought with full awareness what they are ( I was using custom AOSP) should be banned from country in which I was born. That's what I feal. What I feel is I should leave EU and Europe because it will kill itself by people like you. Well good luck with that attitude, becaue it would happen to you at some point and you will end up with no money whatsoever because some government administration worker will say you're guilty of doing something that is part of your income for years.
Dear MAGAt, delete your account and cut your internet cable.
Sure, thanks. Wish you all the best too. What next order you got from your commander ?
1.8 billion? So small? Isn't it even less than budget of smallest member-state?
Low effort trolling XD
Malta’s budget as I undersand 7 billion euros. Meanwhile crApple’s revenue is 385 billion dollars. 1 billion euros is less than 1% of revenue. At this scale it’s cost of doing business, not a fine.
Thank you for pointing out the obvious!
It seems yes, it is smaller than smallest budget in EU. Malta's budget as I undersand 7 billion euros. Meanwhile crApple's revenue is 385 billion dollars. 1 billion euros is less than 1% of revenue. At this scale it's cost of doing business, not a fine.