Apple Faces Antitrust Probe Into Pre-Installed Apps, App Store, and More in Germany

[DeepIn2U]

Germany's Federal Cartel Office, the Bundeskartellamt, today initiated proceedings against Apple on the claims of anti-competitive behavior related to the App Store, its products, and other services, according to a press release.

The proceeding against Apple announced today will determine whether the Cupertino tech giant holds a "paramount significance across markets" and whether, through its ecosystem, Apple holds enough power to make it difficult for "other companies" to challenge it.

Andreas Mundt, president of Bundeskartellamt, issued the following statement on the initial proceedings:
The press release is short on specifics on what the outcome of its investigation may lead to; however, the office says that if it determines a company to be of importance across markets, it may prohibit that company from "engaging in anti-competitive practices."

The office says it has received "various complaints relating to potentially anti-competitive practices," particularly related to the recent rollout of ATT or the App Tracking Transparency framework. In April, nine industry associations representing companies like Facebook and publisher Axel Springer filed an antitrust complaint to the federal office, claiming that Apple's ATT framework will severely hurt publishers and their bottom lines, deeming it a threat to their business.

According to the press release, another complaint that the office received related to the pre-installation of Apple's own apps on its devices. The office directly references section 19a of the German Competition Act, which states "the abuse of a dominant position by one or several undertakings is prohibited" as a potential clause that Apple may be violating.

Russia recently took the first major step against Apple for the pre-installation of its own apps, requiring the company to show users a screen to download government-approved apps during initial device setup. Similar legislation being proposed in the U.S. Congress would require Apple to give users the ability to delete all pre-installed Apple apps, instead of a select handful that users may currently delete.

The Bundeskartellamt also lists ongoing disputes regarding Apple's in-app purchasing system, which gives the tech giant a 30% commission of all purchases made and the restriction that apps may only be distributed on Apple devices through the company's App Store and not other third-party app marketplaces.

Update: Apple has provided us with this statement in response to the investigation.


Article Link: Apple Faces Antitrust Probe Into Pre-Installed Apps, App Store, and More in Germany

k find this all very odd that it’s just Apple here.

so what do we now stand to loose:
Browser,
Contacts,
Calendar,
Clock,
Dialer - phone app
Mail,
Music,
Notes,
Photos apps as well?

why isn’t Google, Samsung, Sony etc all up in this case?! Who’s making money on the shorts if Apple stock drops?! Who’s pockets have yet to be lined (from the accusers to government)?!?!

might as wel go after cell providers cause their bundling text along with voice and data together to provide a product as a service colluding with international roaming partners.

catch my drift here?

 

[boss.king]

Piracy is never a good thing.

Sideloading doesn't mean piracy. It just means installing from somewhere outside of the app store. Half the paid apps on my Mac are "sideloaded".

 

[chucker23n1]

k find this all very odd that it’s just Apple here.

so what do we now stand to loose:
Browser,
Contacts,
Calendar,
Clock,
Dialer - phone app
Mail,
Music,
Notes,
Photos apps as well?

why isn’t Google, Samsung, Sony etc all up in this case?!

Because the complaint was filed against Apple, not against Google, Samsung or Sony.

might as wel go after cell providers cause their bundling text along with voice and data together to provide a product as a service colluding with international roaming partners.

catch my drift here?

No, but I do catch your whataboutism.

 

[ViktorEvil]

I just love how European legislation continues to improve my digital life. Oh the joy of clicking through innumerable cookie-nags every day.

try Hush makes using Safari a lot nicer

 

[mzeb]

This one is hitting the lynchpin of the issue with Apple potentially being monopolistic: the limitation of a singular marketplace, The AppStore. This will be interesting to watch.

In the physical world if a consumer or merchant doesn’t like a particular location of business they can move to another. Not so on iOS. The AppStore is the only game.

The argument of “move to Android” doesn’t hold water either because it is telling a developer to forego almost half their potential revenue or a customer to move to a less secure product.

Neither does saying it will make the product less secure. Don’t want the risk? Don’t download another marketplace. And the walled garden is still there. Consumers should be given the choice to punch down those walls if they are OK with the risk. The Mac works exactly this way and it is still far from the Wild West of security we used to live in.

I don’t see Apple’s services or Apps preinstalled as an issue because choice exists there even if you have to get them elsewhere. Only when there is lack of an alternative do I think these probes might find something.

 

[LarxJo]

Why is this not a problem with cars? How come I can't install and sideload any apps inside my car system? Tesla doesn't allow me to install some kind of carplay app or even have perhaps a music streaming service of my choice.. Honestly, I'm not sure this is all in the best interest of consumers.. Yes, the competition is good.. But if the cars get taken over by virus's and starting killing people, is that ok also? I continue to think the walled garden is a good choice.. Even if it limits dev's in some ways.. You know when they used to sell retail software in stores, the stores/wholesale pipeline took over 75% of the profits.. And was that not a problem before??

1) A car is a vehicle. A smartphone is a general computer. The day a car is used as a general computer, it will also be forced to open its system.
2) There is a lot of competition between car makers. Between Google and Apple? None. It's a duopole, from which EVERYONE IS TOTALLY DEPENDENT. Every user, developer, any company that want to do some business on the mobile market DEPEND on Apple and Google. Those both company can kill any company and put thousands of people out-of-work just because they don't like you app anymore and exactly like Putin, they will suddenly accuse us of violating some random rule. Unless you are a large company, you have no way to oppose to that decision.

So a whole market cannot be so much dependent on 1 or 2 actors and their good will to function properly.

 

[stol]

hmmm, let's see about dominant positions:
Most popular:

• Spreadsheet: Excel
• Word processor: word
• Music Streaming: Spotify
• Video Editing: Adobe
• Video conferencing: Zoom and Microsoft's Groups or whatever

Oh yah baby, dominant position abuse. get all over that

Smartphone marketplace profits: Apple

 

[Hessian]

Do these people want phones to come with 0 apps or what? How about we write our own OS while we’re at it?
Ridiculous.

Agreed. How many of us truly want tech-noobs that phone a friend to setup their new technology actually dictating what the setup and on-going user experience looks like? Just because someone raises a lot of money in exchange for favors doesn't mean they are in a solid position to make such important decisions at this nuanced level.

Let the market decided. There are plenty of manufacturers out there, and Android has the lion share of market regardless. Let me decided if I want the flea market, hybrid, or curated retail experience that each offer. Don't force retail stores to allow the flea market tables to setup free of charge and wreck the experience we signed up for.

 

[kc9hzn]

Just found the real reason for the complaints in the press release of the Bundeskartellamt:

"...these include, among others, an association complaint from the advertising and media industry against Apple restricting user tracking with the introduction of its iOS 14.5 operating system..."
So this, again, is the Springer Press working in the background, teamed up with Facebook Germany and others.

Dis-gus-ting!

Of course it is, it’s another Baptists and Bootleggers situation. Most regulation is, actually.

 

[Hessian]

Smartphone marketplace profits: Apple

So monopolies are measured in profit not market share? Does that mean Tiffany's has a monopoly on diamond rings?

 

[bsolar]

So monopolies are measured in profit not market share? Does that mean Tiffany's has a monopoly on diamond rings?

Monopolies are measured in market power. Market share is one of the main indicators for that, but not the only one.

 

[jmgregory1]

You're missing the point here. Apple is leveraging it's position in the mobile industry to push consumers into giving them a position in other industries such as music, content creation and delivery, and so on. Sure, some of their efforts have been flops like HomePod, Apple Arcade, and so on but what if they hadn't been? Do you want one company to dominate every single market just because they are flush enough with cash to throw money at something that other competitors can't possibly match? It's the same crap that Amazon pulls, selling stuff like their smart speakers at a loss to try and push out better competitors such as Sonos that can't possibly bankroll something in the same manner.

The thing you seem to be missing is that Apple is not the dominant tech company you’re making it out to be. Sure, it’s successful as far as sales and profit, but Android and the general PC market are both leagues ahead of Apple in size.

I’d really like to know who the German government thinks is being harmed here. I have this feeling that they’re equating the potential of poor sales from some developer who just might happen to have created an app that isn’t as good as competitive products from Apple and other developers with Apple keeping a developer from getting an app onto the App Store. And it is also up to any developer to manage marketing of their apps in order to drive consumers to download and use said app.

 

[kc9hzn]

So monopolies are measured in profit not market share? Does that mean Tiffany's has a monopoly on diamond rings?

Or in any sufficiently finely sliced market? I guess Microsoft has a monopoly currently on consumer AR glasses with HoloLens.

 

[mzeb]

Ummm, that’s the main reason I buy Apple devices. It’s all integrated, I can see all my stuff across multiple devices etc. I buy into Apple because it IS ring fenced and controlled!

These two are not mutually exclusive things. You can side load apps and use other marketplaces on the Mac and iCloud integration works just fine and the OS is still secure. Why should this not be the case with the iPhone and iPad?

 

[Hessian]

Yes, I’m on the same train. “We have received complaints” they say, did you complain about the ecosystem? Because I didn’t and don’t know many that willingly and knowingly got into it and then complained.
What I hear complains is about buggy software, the battery drains here or there at times, etc… would rather governments get their hands for that first.



Is that an apples to apples comparison? ApplePay doesn’t charge 30% for each transaction either.

Steam, GoogleStore, MS Stores, online games stores Switch, PSN, Xbox, etc all charge 30% by default.
Apple Store starts with 15% for less $1M revenue then 30% then back to 15% for over subscriptions running over a year. Epic is the lowest currently.

BestBuy, GameStop and any other retail store, if history is still unchanged, maybe all charge 30+% too.

This makes it also sound that if there were a lot more diversity then it would be ok to charge a lot, so maybe a solution is to introduce or force smartphone diversity and then it would be ok for the companies to put their desired charge levels?

Whatever may happen, it feels quite uneasy in my opinion all this forcing of markets around.

Yes, the forcing of the markets is about control and power. The facade of helping consumers is bogus, if that were truly the case, we would be focusing on security and privacy, not of the concentration of power a company has over their own creation.

Somewhere we turned the ire of controlling markets into the controlling of your own product. People can create mental gymnastics all day to appropriate the App Store as a market place of its own, but it simply is not. Best Buy, Macy's, Costco, and even eBay are retail experiences and expressions of the larger marketplace.

This is a play and not for consumers. Consumers need privacy and security, not an alternative App Store for "purchasing" or side loading an app.

 

[Shreducator]

Doesn’t Windows come with pre installed apps.

 

[2013.1]

Ummm, that’s the main reason I buy Apple devices. It’s all integrated, I can see all my stuff across multiple devices etc. I buy into Apple because it IS ring fenced and controlled!

Yeah well, I thought that too but

• I still can install anything on any Mac.
+
• Yesterday I bought a game from the Mac App Store and it just constantly crashed in all kinds of ways
including complete freeze of the Mac. Haven't seen that since Classic Mac OS bombs 💣. It was made for 10.7 and up. "Ran" on 10.14.

 

[TheMacDaddy1]

Ummm, that’s the main reason I buy Apple devices. It’s all integrated, I can see all my stuff across multiple devices etc. I buy into Apple because it IS ring fenced and controlled!

This exactly. Break that up and I wont. I game on a Xbox because of the walled garden after many years of PC gaming that has turned into a hack/cheat fest in any AAA MP game.

The consumers need a voice in this as much as all of the billion/trillion dollar ad firms and developers that have gotten rich off of Apple's app store.

If Apple is forced to allow apps to link to their own payment process I will NOT buy an app unless I can pay for it through Apple. I need another "store" account like I need another hole in my head. Another reason I grew to hate PC gaming too many store apps and accounts. Orgin, Steam, Blizzard, Ubisoft, GOG, Epic...etc.

 

[Glideslope]

k find this all very odd that it’s just Apple here.

so what do we now stand to loose:
Browser,
Contacts,
Calendar,
Clock,
Dialer - phone app
Mail,
Music,
Notes,
Photos apps as well?

why isn’t Google, Samsung, Sony etc all up in this case?! Who’s making money on the shorts if Apple stock drops?! Who’s pockets have yet to be lined (from the accusers to government)?!?!

might as wel go after cell providers cause their bundling text along with voice and data together to provide a product as a service colluding with international roaming partners.

catch my drift here?

Govts. are targeting Apple via the False Pretense of "Antitrust" Trickery.

The goal is to make it easier for them to quickly access anything they want to gather on you. Using an Apple device makes it much more difficult while not impossible.

Orwellian scenario coming closer and closer........ Collecting unearned income from it's citizens is a Hallmark of the EU and USA.

 

[apples_arrogance]

Does this mean we get to have a proper Firefox browser on iOS?

 

[Michael Scrip]

RE: pre-installed apps

So Apple can't include a Camera app because Halide exists?

Or Apple can't include a Calendar app because Fantastical exists?

Or any of a dozen other categories?

 

[TheMacDaddy1]

How about installing apps that are against App Store rules? Side loading is not just piracy.

Why not keep those rules as in if those rules are broken the app cant run? I have no problem with side loading and having other payment options.....as long its an OPTION, like on Android. If you want to open your self up to the scourge of the Internet on a device you probably use for some very private stuff...go ahead...I wont.

 

[mazz0]

Supermarkets likely take in a lot more. When we used to sell software to stores we got back about 10-20% per sale. Now we get back 70-85% from Apple, Google, Valve, and Microsoft. And about 50-60% from Epic

I thought Epic's whole thing is that their cut is smaller?

 

[mzeb]

This exactly. Break that up and I wont. I game on a Xbox because of the walled garden after many years of PC gaming that has turned into a hack/cheat fest in any AAA MP game.

The consumers need a voice in this as much as all of the billion/trillion dollar ad firms and developers that have gotten rich off of Apple's app store.

If Apple is forced to allow apps to link to their own payment process I will NOT buy an app unless I can pay for it through Apple. I need another "store" account like I need another hole in my head. Another reason I grew to hate PC gaming too many store apps and accounts. Orgin, Steam, Blizzard, Ubisoft, GOG, Epic...etc.

These two things are not mutually exclusive. The choice to use origin, steam, blizzard, etc. was yours. And you had the choice. A choice you have given up on the xbox. You could have signed up for Livepass on a windows machine and had a nearly identical situation with MS in control of the experience and maintained that choice. You are locked into it on an xbox.

SOME developers have gotten rich of the AppStore. But so has Apple. The question on the side of developers is whether they should have gotten more of the cut. If you truly want the consumer to have a voice give them the choice of another marketplace to buy from. We don't have that right now. It's the AppStore. That's all we've got. You can make the Android argument but that's like saying switch your house from gas to oil. Sure they do the same thing in the end but either can be monopolistic in their own space and are regulated as such.

While I appreciate the desire for a focused, simple, and secure environment with minimal effort should be an option it doesn't need to come at the cost of other options. You should not lose this choice as a result of what Germany or Russia asks. If you do then those governments failed at protecting consumer choice. It should also not be the only choice though.

 

[stol]

So monopolies are measured in profit not market share? Does that mean Tiffany's has a monopoly on diamond rings?

No one says Apple is a monopoly. This is dumb.

Anti-competitive behavior != monopoly.

Edit: To make it more clear, if everyone wants to compete in this profitable space which requires presence in smartphone app markets, Apple has a huge advantage. Simple as that. (Google does as well)
We are way past the point where "Apple has made something special for themselves and their customers" If I have a business that benefits from the use of a smartphone app, do I really have the choice to not develop an app for iOS? I don't think so.