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

Is water wet?

[sinij]

The Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets said in a statement that oceanographers have submitted evidence "which seem to indicate that Ocean is wet." The regulator said it had been studying the issue for 10 months. It said the probe would initially focus on bottled water, but it also called on oceanographers to report any issues with wetness to the authorities.

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.

Re:Would be nice to know what advantages

[SuperKendall]

Showing the Apple apps before the 3rd party ones could be a simple advantage.

It would be - if they were doing that.

They do not (in App Store search results) and a number of Apple apps are not shipped on device so you have to get them from the App Store just like any other app. In fact when you open the App Store you initially get a "Featured" page these days chock full of non-Apple apps to look at first, before you even search.

So where is the Apple advantage?

Re:Would be nice to know what advantages

[Misagon]

I know at least one case where Apple iOS has been giving applications signed with Apple's own code-signing certificate some additional entitlement(s) within iOS.

Under iOS, mmap() and mprotect() disallow regular applications to set both +w and +x flags on the same segment.
Mobile Safari, however, has the "dynamic-codesigning" entitlement which enables MAP_JIT to do that. This has allowed Safari to perform just-in-time - compilation to run Javascript faster than third-party web browsers.

Now, it does not seem entirely unreasonable to restrict MAP_JIT to trusted developers. The questions are why it has not been available to others, and if there are other entitlements within iOS that Apple has been hogging.

Re:Would be nice to know what advantages

[Anonymous Coward]

I was going to write an answer assuming you were honestly asking, and then I recognized the user name as a known Apple shill. So I now know not to expect an answer in good faith.

The bottom line is that Apple absolutely abuses their control of the App Store to punish third parties trying to compete with them. Maps is a simple example - anywhere iOS detects an address, that address will always open in Apple Maps. There is no way to tell it to use a third party mapping program instead.

Something similar happens with Apple Music. Various things that are supposed to start audio playing will always trigger Apple Music. For example, if you plug your phone into a car equipped with CarPlay and turn the car's audio on, this will always launch Apple Music, regardless of what was playing prior.

There are various ways that Apple hooks their apps into iOS that third parties simply cannot do. As an example, they recently released a "Shortcuts" app that allows you to automate various tasks in iOS. However, this only works on Apple apps and a very limited selection of third party "partners." You can use it to start playing music in Apple Music, but not in Spotify.

SiriKit is also heavily limited. You can't use SiriKit to replace Apple's default services. Want to let people ask Siri for directions using a third party mapping app? Tough. You can't. Want to provide a way to use voice commands to play music? Also not allowed.

Then there's the whole Apple Tax, where Apple takes a 30% cut of all revenue "generated" by apps. If you have an app on iOS, regardless of how you handle payments, you're "supposed" to pay Apple 30% of all revenue "generated by" the app. This is why the method to side step that is to prevent purchases on iOS entirely - even if you don't use Apple as the payment processor, you're required to send them 30% of all revenue. Even if you have the app launch a web page, that's also considered revenue "generated by" the app. The only solution is to entirely block purchases from iOS devices.

Apple, of course, doesn't have to pay the Apple Tax, because they would only be paying themselves. It's a simple way they can make third party apps more expensive while undercutting them when offering the same services.

It would be great to see the EU slap Apple down on this and force them to provide third party apps a level playing field. Sadly anything Apple does would likely be EU-only, but I'd love to see Spotify be given a level playing field on iOS given that Apple Music is such an abysmally bad and buggy service.

Re:Would be nice to know what advantages

[Njovich]

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

That's only true where Apple likes it. Try writing an app that uses NFC, somehow Apple can but you can't. There is a long list of things Apple can do, but you aren't allowed. Think using your own browser engine, taking creditcard payments for digital products, or even making a link to a place where people can do that.

The consumer authority doesn't specify what they are looking for, but as an example gives that third apps have to pay a certain percentage of income to Apple and that it's not clear whether Apple apps have to.

Re:Would be nice to know what advantages

[SuperKendall]

It is possible that they've seen patterns that you're missing ?

It sure is which is why the very first thing I said is, it would be great to know what they are thinking are advantages - because that info was not in the article at the link.

Even before they looked at anything though, there had to be some basis to start looking into this claim, right? So what was THAT basis? Also not reported on by article.

I've not seen anything Apple promoting on device for a while and as an iOS developer, I pay more attention to the App Store than most people so I also am in a good position to see patterns as well, which I've seen no sign of. The patterns I HAVE seen indicate Apple is making a larger and larger push to drive people to buy third party apps, which makes sense because both Apple and app developers win in that case as well. The whole "Today" tab with Apple crafted stories promoting apps that fall together under some theme is case in point, Apple is spending a lot of effort trying to help third party apps. So is the aspect that Apple has been making more Apple apps deletable, and does not do things like ship Pages/Numbers work apps on devices, you have to search for and download them...

OMFG

[jwymanm]

It is Apple's app store. What the hell do you think it is? What the hell is wrong with Europe? News at 11: Mcdonalds favors its own burgers on its own menu!@#! Holly crap. I'm thinking Burger King does too. The horror and the shame. Maybe governments should be spending 100% of their time and money on actual crime prevention via poverty reduction and education before they start screwing around with FB, Apple, Google, etc. I just smell gov subsidy through fines all over these regulatory efforts. Also NIH syndrome/anti USA.

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.

Algorithmic Bias

[darkain]

This is simply algorithmic bias. The stores prioritize apps which have the largest install base and vendors with the overall largest install base. Many of these apps come bundled with the phones and tablets already. These numbers count in their respective stores, increasing not only the individual app's rating, but their vendor's rating as well. Therefor any other app released by the vendor will have a head start over any other apps from another vendor in the respective stores.

Well...

[xlsior]

...Given that they explicitly prohibit 3rd party apps from duplicating functionality present in Apple's own apps, my guess is that would be a "yes".