Dutch Regulators Want To Know Whether Apple is Favoring Its Own Apps (cnn.com)

Apple has another antitrust problem in Europe. Dutch regulators said Thursday that they have opened an investigation into whether Apple has abused its market position by giving preferential treatment to its own apps. From a report: The Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets said in a statement that app providers have submitted evidence "which seem to indicate that Apple abuses its position in the App Store." The regulator said it had been studying the issue for 10 months. It said the probe would initially focus on Apple, but it also called on app providers to report any issues with Google's Play Store. "Apps have increasingly become important parts of our daily lives," said the regulator, which added that it "expects Apple and Google to exhibit fair and transparent behavior." Apple said in a statement that it is "confident" the review "will confirm all developers have an equal opportunity to succeed in the App Store." The move comes after Spotify launched a similar complaint against Apple last month with the European Commission.

Comments

Would be nice to know what advantages

[SuperKendall]

There's an inherent advantage with some apps shipping with the phone, but beyond that I'm not sure I see what the advantages would be... Apple has been even moving to make more system apps deletable!

Apple apps use the same system frameworks to operate as consumer apps, and are limited by the same access controls to things like photos or location that any other app is. Searching the App Store I've not seen Apple apps like Pages given preference or unwanted appearance in search results.

It would be really interesting to know what advantages they are looking for... Apple doesn't have an inherent benefit from you using Apple apps or not, because whatever app you end up using you are paying Apple for the hardware to run it. That is inertly different than Google with Android apps, where the real money is made by you using Google products and contributing data feeds to Google.

Where do they have that?

[SuperKendall]

they do have the "Made By Apple" section on the right side within the App Store.

Opening the App Store right now:

iPhone/iPad: No "Made by Apple" section or tab, not on Today tab, not on Apps tab.

App categories: No "Made by Apple" section.

App Store on Mac: No "Made by Apple" section.

Maybe once they did, but not for some time.

So again, where the the Apple advantage in anything presented by the App Store app? I don't see anything, I see Apple promoting a TON of third party apps. Heck I just went into a travel app for a city I'm visiting, and they promoted a number of alternative transit and mapping apps even though you can just use transit in maps.app.