The European Union leveled its first antitrust penalty against Apple Inc yesterday, fining the US tech giant nearly US$2 billion for breaking the bloc’s competition laws by unfairly favoring its own music streaming service over rivals.
Apple banned app developers from “fully informing iOS users about alternative and cheaper music subscription services outside of the app,” said the European Commission, the 27-nation bloc’s executive arm and top antitrust enforcer.
“This is illegal, and it has impacted millions of European consumers,” EU Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager said at a news conference in Brussels, Belgium.
Photo: Geert Vanden Wijngaert, AP
Apple behaved this way for almost a decade, which meant many users paid “significantly higher prices for music streaming subscriptions,” the commission said.
The 1.8 billion-euro fine follows a long-running investigation triggered by a complaint from Swedish streaming service Spotify Technology SA five years ago.
The EU has led global efforts to crack down on Big Tech companies, including a series of multbillion-dollar fines for Google and charging Meta Platforms Inc with distorting the online classified ad market. The commission also has opened a separate antitrust investigation into Apple’s mobile payments service.
Apple hit back at both the commission and Spotify, saying it would appeal the penalty.
“The decision was reached despite the Commission’s failure to uncover any credible evidence of consumer harm, and ignores the realities of a market that is thriving, competitive, and growing fast,” the company said in a statement.
It said Spotify stood to benefit from the decision, asserting that the Swedish streaming service that holds a 56 percent share of Europe’s music streaming market and doesn’t pay Apple for using its App Store met 65 times with the commission over eight years.
“Ironically, in the name of competition, today’s decision just cements the dominant position of a successful European company that is the digital music market’s runaway leader,” Apple said.
The commission’s investigation initially centered on two concerns. One was the iPhone maker’s practice of forcing app developers that are selling digital content to use its in-house payment system, which charges a 30 percent commission on all subscriptions.
But the EU later dropped that to focus on how Apple prevents app makers from telling their users about cheaper ways to pay for subscriptions that don’t involve going through an app.
The investigation found that Apple banned streaming services from telling users about how much subscription offers cost outside of their apps, including links in their apps to pay for alternative subscriptions or even emailing users to tell them about different pricing options.
The fine comes the same week that new EU rules are set to kick in that are aimed at preventing tech companies from dominating digital markets.
The Digital Markets Act (DMA), due to take effect on Thursday, imposes a set of do’s and don’ts on “gatekeeper” companies including Apple, Meta, Google parent Alphabet Inc and TikTok parent ByteDance Ltd (字節跳動) — under threat of hefty fines.
The DMA’s provisions are designed to prevent tech giants from the sort of behavior that’s at the heart of the Apple investigation. Apple has already revealed how it will comply, including allowing iPhone users in Europe to use app stores other than its own and enabling developers to offer alternative payment systems.
The commission also has opened a separate antitrust investigation into Apple’s mobile payments service, and the company has promised to open up its tap-and-go mobile payment system to rivals in order to resolve it.
CHIP RACE: Three years of overbroad export controls drove foreign competitors to pursue their own AI chips, and ‘cost US taxpayers billions of dollars,’ Nvidia said China has figured out the US strategy for allowing it to buy Nvidia Corp’s H200s and is rejecting the artificial intelligence (AI) chip in favor of domestically developed semiconductors, White House AI adviser David Sacks said, citing news reports. US President Donald Trump on Monday said that he would allow shipments of Nvidia’s H200 chips to China, part of an administration effort backed by Sacks to challenge Chinese tech champions such as Huawei Technologies Co (華為) by bringing US competition to their home market. On Friday, Sacks signaled that he was uncertain about whether that approach would work. “They’re rejecting our chips,” Sacks
Taiwan’s long-term economic competitiveness will hinge not only on national champions like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC, 台積電) but also on the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and other emerging technologies, a US-based scholar has said. At a lecture in Taipei on Tuesday, Jeffrey Ding, assistant professor of political science at the George Washington University and author of "Technology and the Rise of Great Powers," argued that historical experience shows that general-purpose technologies (GPTs) — such as electricity, computers and now AI — shape long-term economic advantages through their diffusion across the broader economy. "What really matters is not who pioneers
BUBBLE? Only a handful of companies are seeing rapid revenue growth and higher valuations, and it is not enough to call the AI trend a transformation, an analyst said Artificial intelligence (AI) is entering a more challenging phase next year as companies move beyond experimentation and begin demanding clear financial returns from a technology that has delivered big gains to only a small group of early adopters, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Taiwan said yesterday. Most organizations have been able to justify AI investments through cost recovery or modest efficiency gains, but few have achieved meaningful revenue growth or long-term competitive advantage, the consultancy said in its 2026 AI Business Predictions report. This growing performance gap is forcing executives to reconsider how AI is deployed across their organizations, it said. “Many companies
TAIWAN VALUE CHAIN: Foxtron is to fully own Luxgen following the transaction and it plans to launch a new electric model, the Foxtron Bria, in Taiwan next year Yulon Motor Co (裕隆汽車) yesterday said that its board of directors approved the disposal of its electric vehicle (EV) unit, Luxgen Motor Co (納智捷汽車), to Foxtron Vehicle Technologies Co (鴻華先進) for NT$787.6 million (US$24.98 million). Foxtron, a half-half joint venture between Yulon affiliate Hua-Chuang Automobile Information Technical Center Co (華創車電) and Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), expects to wrap up the deal in the first quarter of next year. Foxtron would fully own Luxgen following the transaction, including five car distributing companies, outlets and all employees. The deal is subject to the approval of the Fair Trade Commission, Foxtron said. “Foxtron will be
RSS