Apple Soon To Charge Violating EU Antitrust Laws Over Spotify Complaint
The European Commission (EC) may already this week bring charges against Apple for violating antitrust laws. Bloomberg and the Financial Times reported this. According to their sources, the decision stems from a complaint filed against Apple by Swedish audio streaming service Spotify in 2019.
According to the Financial Times, European regulators have been investigating Apple for two years, suspected of violating EU antitrust laws. Formalizing charges against the company will be the next step in this investigation. It is noted that the documents that the EC will transfer to Apple will describe the violations committed by the company, give recommendations for their elimination, and also consider the need to apply penalties.
According to the Spotify complaint, the Swedish company has a hard time competing with Apple Music due to the size of App Store fees. Apple receives 30% of the fee passed on to app users who purchase digital services and service subscriptions, including Spotify. App developers have no alternatives as owners of Apple devices can only download programs from its app store. This policy allows Apple to gain an unreasonable advantage and generally limits the ability of app creators.
Apple did not comment on the latest messages about the upcoming accusation of the EC but only referred to the text in its official blog, published back in 2019. In it, the company denies any allegations of violating antitrust laws and states that Spotify is ” trying to retain a significant portion of the revenue it generates from its App Store customers without contributing to the platform itself .”
