According to reports, Apple will receive a fine of 500 million euros from the EU. But why is Apple being imposed this penalty?
Apple is fined 500 million euros
The fact that Apple received this fine from the EU is due to a lawsuit started by Spotify in 2019. It stated (in short) that Apple gives itself a significant advantage in the App Store.
Spotify has the greatest difficulty with the 30 percent that Apple takes from all payments in the App Store. This would cause the price of a Spotify subscription that you take out via the App Store to cost about 30 percent more. That is why Spotify decided to only take out subscriptions via their own website in 2019.
In addition, Spotify believes that Apple regularly makes certain features only available for its own products. For example, Siri does not work well with Spotify.
The EU has now looked into it and believes that Apple should pay a fine. According to the EU, Apple has deliberately not given other streaming sites the opportunity to inform their customers how they can take out a subscription.
The problem of Apple blocking other providers is bigger, but this fine from the EU is specifically about thwarting other music streaming services. In particular, the fact that Apple charges a 30 percent commission for each payment and does not allow notification of other payment methods gives Apple a major advantage over other providers.
The EU’s ultimate goal is not to force Apple to allow an alternative payment method. But providers such as Spotify must be able to link their website to which you can take out a subscription.
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