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Apple has been fined €1.8bn ($2bn) by the EU after an investigation found it had limited competition from music streaming services such as Spotify.
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The European competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, said a smaller fine would have been nothing more than the equivalent of a parking fine and the €1.8bn was designed to act as a deterrent against a repetition of such practices by Apple or others.
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“Apple’s rules ended up harming consumers. Critical information was withheld so that consumers could not effectively use or make informed choices. Some consumers may have paid more because they weren’t aware that they can pay less if they subscribed outside of the app,” Vestager said.
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Vestager said consumers may have paid two or three euros a month more for music streaming because of the lack of open competition. However, she conceded that the fine would not be distributed to customers who had been allegedly exploited but to individual member states.
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She said the fine represented 0.5% of Apple’s global turnover.
Still a drop in the bucket for them (that sounds crazy just saying that) but def a step in the right direction.
It’s really not - this is something like two years of revenue for Apple Music in Europe.
Spotify is free to sue Apple in every other jurisdiction around the world. Imagine if Spotify wins the same amount of money in a couple hundred more countries? Anti-competition law is largely the same everywhere in the world and Apple has the same business practices everywhere, so Apple would lose the same lawsuit elsewhere. It could easily end up with hundreds of billions in damages and why wouldn’t Spotify sue Apple in every country?
I bet Spotify and Apple are working as we speak to settle this dispute out of court with a settlement that applies globally — this one is only for the EU.
There are only around 195 countries in the first place and the EU represents 27 of them. So I’m afraid there isn’t a couple hundred more available to fine Apple.