EU Narrows Apple Case To Curbs on Apps Flagging Cheaper Deal (bloomberg.com) 12
The European Union narrowed a probe into Apple's allegedly unfair treatment of music streaming firms such as Spotify, refocusing on curbs that prevent firms from steering users away from the App Store. From a report: The European Commission on Tuesday said it's issued a revised charge sheet known as a statement objections, two years after hitting the tech company with a broader complaint laying out how it thinks Apple abused its power as the "gatekeeper" for apps on its devices. The EU regulator said it no longer targets concerns "as to the legality" of Apple's practice of imposing its own in-app purchase payment technology on music streaming app developers. Instead, the probe homes in "on the contractual restrictions that Apple imposed on app developers which prevent them from informing iPhone and iPad users of alternative music subscription options at lower prices outside of the app and to effectively choose those."
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Has it had any impact on regular users?
Yes. They end up paying more because they can't be told (contractually) that there's ways to subscribe (often cheaper) outside of in-app purchases/subscription.
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Or users could go to Spotify website and find that out for themselves.
Your local grocer isn't required to post the prices or location of their cheaper competitor. You have to go search that out yourself.
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Exactly. The EU shakes Apple down for not doing things that no other business anywhere else would be expected to do.
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That's the fun part of being a sovereign government or federation. You can do things that no other government anywhere else would do because you consider them to be better ideas than those that other governments have, and you might even end up being demonstrably right.
If participating in the EU economy is so onerous, then Apple and/or Google can leave. Yet for some reason (a population of 450 million
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Your local grocer doesn't impose an illegal contractual provision which prevents you from labeling your product with an MSRP and a link to your online store either. Your local grocer doesn't sell you a pantry that can only be loaded with their approved groceries and affirmatively block you from loading any other groceries into it either.
Bad analogies, no matter how you paint
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To understand this you have to get out of the American mindset. In the EU, monopolies are bad and competition is good.
Apple controls a significant proportion of the mobile market, and has an iron grip on it. By banning apps from even mentioning that users can pay less somewhere else, they frustrate competition.
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That's not an American mindset, that's an ifan mindset. They find anything that's at odds with apple to be deplorable. That's why they think it would be a travesty if people were to sideload apps.
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Or users could go to Spotify website and find that out for themselves.
Your local grocer isn't required to post the prices or location of their cheaper competitor. You have to go search that out yourself.
The manufacturer of any given product can advertise its own pricing somewhere within its product. That can and does happen with groceries and other products sold in physical stores. In fact, in at least one case, a store got into trouble for opening the box and removing a coupon:
https://kotaku.com/gamestop-ap... [kotaku.com]
So why don't app stores get into trouble when they effectively do the same thing?
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100 ways to figure out the price and buy it and none of them require apple or the app store. try again.
So in other words, the EU is right to look into the contractual obligations Apple imposed on developers as "unnecessary" and "anti-competitive".
Thanks for the confirmation.