Italian Competition Regulator Launches Investigation Into Apple Over Abuse Of Apps Market

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 11th May, 2023) The Italian Competition Authority, the country's market competition watchdog, said on Thursday that it had launched an investigation into Apple over the alleged abuse of its dominant position on the smart phone apps market.

"The Italian Competition Authority has started a preliminary investigation against companies Apple Inc., Apple Distribution International Ltd. and Apple Italia S.r.l. in order to ascertain the fact of a presumed abuse of the dominant position on the platform market for distribution of applications for users of the iOS operating system," the body said in a statement.

The statement also noted that, in April 2021, the company adopted tougher privacy policy in relation to third-party app developers, compared to the one it uses for itself.

Besides, outside developers and advertisers are at a disadvantage in terms of the quality of the data regarding ads' effectiveness in their apps which Apple provides to them.

In 2021, the Competition Authority fined Amazon about $1.28 billion for its alleged abuse of market dominance to promote its own logistics service. Last year, it fined China's xiaomi about $3.5 billion for its refusal to repair smart phones that were still under warranty.