A press release issued this morning lets us know that theMarket Competition Authority has decided to launch an investigation against Apple to verify that the conditions exist for the presence of a abuse of dominant position in the applications market.
According to the AGCM, Apple would have adopted a stricter privacy policy for third-party developers than it applies for itself.
Politics started from April 2021 and it is based, explains the Authority, on the characteristics of the prompt displayed to users when consent to the tracking of their navigation data on the web is requested.
The problems detected by the AGCM
Going into more detail, it seems that the Cupertino house imposes third-party developers and competitors the use of a consent request prompt in a position that is emphasized more than in denial.
It also appears that the quality and detail of the data made available by Apple for developers and third-party advertisers is disadvantageous towards them, with related effects on the effectiveness of the marketing campaigns of these applications.
SkadNetworkthe programming interface they can access, would seem much less effective than the tool that Apple uses internally: Apple Ads Attribution.
From a section of the press release we read that:
[…] according to the Authority, Apple’s alleged discriminatory conduct could cause a decline in third-party advertisers’ advertising revenues, to the benefit of its commercial division; restrict 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.[…]
The Antitrust concludes by arguing that the alleged dominant position of Apple in this market it could reduce the incentives to develop innovative applications by hindering the transition of users to competing digital systems.
