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Justice Department probes Apple

by on04 June 2019


Anti-competitive actions

The US Justice Department has jurisdiction for a potential probe of Apple using its size to act in an anti-competitive manner.

The Justice Department’s Antitrust Division and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) met in recent weeks and agreed to give the Justice Department the jurisdiction to undertake potential antitrust probes of Apple.

Apple has previous form for antitrust activities and was convicted of running a pricing cartel to force users to pay more cash for ebooks while hurting its rival Amazon. It later got into hot water for ignoring a court order to accept training from an antitrust expert to prevent that sort of thing happening again.

Streaming music leader Spotify Technology SA and others have criticised the iPhone maker’s practices, describing the company as anti-competitive in a complaint to the European Union’s antitrust regulators.

Central to Spotify’s complaint is a 30 percent cut Apple charges content based service providers to use Apple’s in-app purchase system.

The company has defended its practices in the past, saying it only collects a commission if a good or service is sold through an app. “Our users trust Apple - and that trust is critical to how we operate a fair, competitive store for developer app distribution”, it has said previously.

 

Last modified on 04 June 2019
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