Italian antitrust watchdog AGCM has launched an investigation into Apple over its alleged abuse of market dominance against third-party app developers. The US tech giant is accused of applying more restrictive and disadvantageous data privacy policies to non-Apple apps since April 2021. The agency explained that only Apple competitors are required to display the prompt to ask user consent for tracking in a more relevant position compared to the one to deny the practice. This is also reported to employ misleading language about online tracking activities.
The investigation also uncovered that third-party developers were disadvantaged by the quality and details that Apple provided them regarding their ad campaigns. Apple’s alleged discriminatory conduct may cause a drop in advertising revenue from third-party advertisers, to the benefit of its commercial division, reduce entry and/or prevent competitors from remaining in the app development and distribution market, benefit their own apps and, consequently, mobile devices, and the Apple iOS operating system.
Apple has denied the allegations, stating that it imposes the same privacy rules to all developers, including Apple itself. The company plans to engage constructively with AGCM to address any of their questions. However, Apple is not new to antitrust investigations in Europe. Several complaints and probes have been filed over alleged abuses since the company launched its App Tracking Transparency (ATT) feature two years ago. France, Germany, Poland, and the UK have raised concerns over Apple’s ATT practices. As the Digital Markets Act comes into force, Apple may continue to face growing scrutiny in Europe.
