Apple Inc. is going through troubled times. The high-tech giant has to pay a hefty fine of €1.8 billion slapped on it by the European Commission for breaching antitrust legislation.
Experts say that Apple is facing the first penalty imposed by the European authorities for abuses in the music streaming platform market.
European lawmakers also noted, "Apple applied restrictions on app developers preventing them from informing iOS users about alternative and cheaper music subscription services available outside the App Store. This is illegal under EU antitrust rules," the EU's competition regulator said. Such Apple’s actions affected the interests of millions of European consumers as they "paid large sums for subscription to music services" due to this corporate policy
In 2019, the Swedish music streaming platform Spotify filed a complaint against Apple. The firm said the corporation was “abusing its dominant market position.” Based on the complaint, the European Commission launched an investigation against the iPhone manufacturer. Since then, the corporation has amended some rules. For example, Apple allowed application developers to tell customers about other payment methods without insisting on using their own payment system. Moreover, Apple management allowed users to subscribe to Spotify and rival music services outside of iOS. However, Spotify later said that the proposed measures were introduced only on paper and did not bring significant changes.
