Apple is in trouble again! The EU will formally launch an antitrust investigation against it

It coincides with Apple's "troubled times", and unfortunately Apple has once again been pushed to the forefront by its competitors...

According to the Financial Times on the 6th, citing people familiar with the matter, the European Competition Commission decided to conduct an antitrust investigation into Apple's APP Store in the next few weeks after collecting opinions from multiple parties.

In March of this year, Spotify formally filed a complaint with the European Union, claiming that Apple had engaged in illegal behavior and abused its App Store dominance to favor its own Apple Music service. Spotify's complaint mainly focused on Apple's 30% commission on digital content providers that use its payment system to sell subscription services in the App Store. This policy applies to Spotify and other music subscription services, but not other apps such as Uber.

This time, it was Spotify that brought Apple to the EU law enforcement, and Soptify is a competitor of Apple Music. If the subsequent investigation results show that Soptify's allegations against Apple are valid, the EU can impose a fine of up to 10% of Apple's global revenue.

According to Apple's 2018 fiscal year report, Apple's global revenue last year was $266 billion. Once the EU confirms through investigation that Apple has indeed "manipulated the competitive field to put its competitors at a disadvantage", Apple will face a fine of up to $26.6 billion.

Apple's previous response was that Spotify used "misleading rhetoric." "After significantly growing their business with the App Store over the years, Spotify seeks to keep all App Store revenue without contributing anything to the platform," Apple said.

Apple and Spotify have not yet commented publicly.