The debate about how Apple runs its App Store continues to rumble, and politics website Politico suggests that there could be a significant development in the US soon.
“The Justice Department and a coalition of state attorneys general are taking the first steps toward launching an antitrust probe of Apple,” it claimed, adding that the probe may focus on “Apple’s ironclad control of its App Store, the source of frequent griping by developers who say the company’s rules are applied inconsistently — particularly for apps that compete with Apple’s own products — and lead to higher prices and fewer choices for consumers”.
Any such investigation would run in parallel with the European Commission’s formal investigations into Apple, including one partially sparked by last year’s complaint from Spotify.
The latter company’s general counsel Horacio Gutierrez said earlier this month that “we have not filed a complaint in the US, but we have been approached by a variety of regulators in the US and have been asked for our views, and been asked to share information about our complaint in Europe, and obviously we have cooperated with them”, adding that “we have been approached by a variety of agencies in the US both at the federal level and the state AG [attorney general] level”.
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