EU fines Apple 1,840 million euros in antitrust case

(CNN) — The European Union (EU) has fined Apple 1,840 million euros (about US$2,000 million) for violating its competition laws.

The bloc announced Monday that it would fine rival music streaming services like Spotify to stop them from telling iPhone users — its first antitrust ban on a U.S. tech giant — that they could find cheaper ways to subscribe to Apple apps outside the store. Can.

EU competition and digital affairs chief Margrethe Vestager said Apple (AAPL) has “abused its dominant position” as a distributor of music streaming apps, adding that European consumers have no control over “where, how and what.” There is no freedom of choice about” prices of purchasing music streaming subscriptions.

“This is illegal and it affects millions of European consumers,” Vestager said at a news conference.

Apple responded that the decision by the European Commission, the EU’s executive branch, “comes despite uncovering no credible evidence of consumer harm, and ignores the realities of a market that is rich, competitive and rapidly growing.” Used to be.”

The company said in a statement that app developers “compete equally” in Apple’s App Store.

The European Commission launched a formal antitrust investigation into Apple in 2020 after Spotify (SPOT) filed a complaint against Apple last year accusing it of unfairly harming its competitors.

It claimed that Apple required the Swedish music streaming company and other content providers to pay a 30% fee on purchases made through Apple’s in-app payment system, while its own service, Apple Music, did not pay this fee. Didn’t have to pay. Spotify also said Apple prevented it from sharing information about subscription offers with customers using iPhones.

According to Spotify, Apple is “one of the largest vendors of smartphones” and its smartphone operating system is “the only way to offer our apps to anyone who has an iPhone”.

In January, Apple announced changes to its handling of its apps in the EU, including plans to allow third-party app stores on iPhones and iPads for the first time in the company’s history, and a significant cut in its App Store fees.

The changes were announced in anticipation of EU rules that will come into effect this month as part of the Digital Markets Act, a comprehensive set of competition rules for big tech.

News in development.