An Apple Japanese antitrust investigation was closed final month, when the Cupertino firm made a significant concession. However simply six weeks later, a brand new antitrust investigation has been opened in Japan, into the market dominance of iOS and Android.
The information comes on the identical day that the Dutch antitrust authority discovered Apple’s in-app fee preparations to be anti-competitive …
Background
The Japan Truthful Commerce Fee (JFTC) beforehand performed an investigation into the App Retailer’s in-app buy system. It concluded that it was certainly anti-competitive for Apple to power builders to pay Apple’s fee on in-app purchases, and that it ought to enable them to level customers to exterior fee choices, like their very own web sites.
Apple introduced on September 1 that this case had lastly been settled, with the corporate agreeing a concession for so-called “reader apps,” which is Apple’s time period for apps that supply content material subscriptions for digital magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music, and video. These apps will likely be allowed to incorporate a single hyperlink to exterior fee websites.
Apple mentioned that this concession would apply globally from early subsequent yr.
Apple Japanese antitrust investigation #4
Nonetheless, Nikkei Asia stories {that a} new antitrust investigation has been opened – once more by the JFTC.
This would be the fourth Japanese antitrust investigation to incorporate Apple. The primary, opened again in 2019, examined the iPhone maker’s relationship with element suppliers; the second is wanting into the marketplace for cloud companies, together with iCloud; the third associated to in-app fee.
This newest one considerations cellular working methods, inspecting how and why iOS and Android between them dominate the cellular working system market.
Japan’s Truthful Commerce Fee will examine whether or not Apple and Google are leveraging their dominance within the smartphone working system market to get rid of competitors and severely restrict choices for customers […]
The antitrust watchdog will compile a report outlining OS market construction and the explanation why competitors has remained static. The fee will work with the central authorities’s Digital Market Competitors Council, which is shifting ahead with its personal market probe.
Practices discovered to be anticompetitive will likely be itemized within the report, together with attainable violations of Japan’s legislation towards monopolies.
Inside Japan, Apple’s share of the market is sort of 70%, with Android accounting for the remaining 30%.
The Truthful Commerce Fee will probe whether or not Apple and Google-parent Alphabet are utilizing their market supremacy to nook the apps [market] and depart customers at an obstacle.
The investigation will cowl not simply smartphones, but additionally smartwatches and “different wearables.”
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