It’s been a strong year for Apple – especially when set against the ongoing health crisis and the difficulties faced by the tech market as a whole – but the biggest fly in Tim Cook’s ointment is the claim that the company has been violating competition laws.
Within the space of a single week in June, the US House of Representatives and the EU announced they were investigating Apple for alleged anticompetitive behaviour. The US inquiry has now moved into its more public phase; after last week agreeing to face questioning, Cook now has a date to put in his diary.
Yesterday the House Committee on the Judiciary announced details of the upcoming inquiry. In a press release it said the hearing, entitled ‘Online Platforms and Market Power, Part 6: Examining the Dominance of Amazon, Facebook, Google and Apple’, will begin on 27 July. Cook will appear before the House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee, chaired by the Rhode Island Democrat David Cicilline. Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Sundar Pichai (Google) and Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) will also appear.
Officially, discussion will centre on “the dominance of a small number of digital platforms and the adequacy of existing antitrust laws and enforcement”. In Apple’s case, this is likely to focus on the role, structure and policing of the App Store, including the 30% revenue cut the company takes from app subscriptions.
Spotify has been one of the loudest critical voices, but Apple recently came in for a lot of negative publicity after the maker of an email app complained on Twitter about the company’s stringent subscription rules. Apple initially held firm on that one, but at WWDC it announced that developers will in future be able formally to appeal against unfavourable decisions, or even against the rules themselves.
The hearing is scheduled to begin at noon ET on 27 July – that’s 5pm UK time. You’ll be able to watch it live on the committee’s YouTube channel. As Philip Elmer-DeWitt observes, it’ll be a busy week for Apple: the company is slated to report Q3 2020 earnings on the Thursday.
Via MACWORLD