EU fines Apple €1.8bn over App Store restrictions on music streaming
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Apple has been fined €1.8bn by the EU after an investigation into restrictions imposed by its App Store on music streaming providers such as Spotify.
The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, imposed the punishment after finding the iPhone maker had broken competition law by imposing curbs on app developers.
The investigation, launched following a complaint from Spotify, focused on a restriction that prevented developers from telling iPhone and iPad users about alternative ways of subscribing to their music streaming services, which bypass Apple.
Spotify has argued the restrictions benefit Apple’s rival music streaming service, Apple Music.
Spotify and other app providers have been longstanding critics of Apple’s App Store, which they argue stifles competition by, for instance, charging a 30% fee on apps and in-app purchases.
However, Apple has announced plans to allow EU customers to download apps onto iPhones outside of the App Store, in response to the introduction of the trading bloc’s digital markets act (DMA), which has been brought in to regulate major tech firms such as Apple, Microsoft and Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta.
The DMA introduced last year by the European Union was designed to pave the way for more competition in some of the areas most closely guarded by the tech firms, including Apple Wallet and Google Pay and to remove their gatekeeping powers.
The tech companies were given six months from August last year to comply with a full list of dos and don’ts under the new laws, after which they could be fined up to 10% of their turnover. In Meta’s case, this would be 10% of $120bn.