High commission on web purchases: EU supposedly knocks on the fingers

The EU is currently completing the first major investigation as to whether Apple actually follows certain requirements of the law on digital markets (Digital Markets Act, DMA). According to the regulators, this is obviously not the case: The EU Commission prepares the imposition of a penalty payment against Apple and wants to issue instructions to end the violations-this is expected to happen in the coming week. The reports the Reuters news agency People familiar on Tuesday, citing the matter.

High commission on web purchases

Specifically, the investigation is about whether Apple allows app providers and developers in the App Store to refer their customers freely to cheaper offers on the web. Although Apple had already loosened its controversial sweat (“anti-steering rules”) for developers, the group continues to insist on a commission: If users from the app make a purchase on the web directly from the provider, Apple also demands up to 27 percent of the sales price for itself.

She already showed it through that the Commission does not agree. The fees go “far”, which is actually appropriate for this, it was already said last June. The EU competition keepers have recently raised the same allegations against Google's Play Store in Android.

Because of these anti-steering rules, the EU Commission had already set a penalty of 1.8 billion euros against Apple in a competitive procedure initiated by Spotify. How high the upcoming penalty payment is now remains open for the time being. The Digital Markets Act allows punishments that range from up to 10 percent of the global corporate turnover, at Apple that would be dizzying multi-billion bills.

More selection with standard apps and browsers

However, the EU Commission is now satisfied with other far-reaching changes in iOS: Apple had to recover extensively for standard apps and the browser selection dialog, but now fulfills the rules of the DMA. Users can now set up standard apps in the iOS settings, with iOS 18.4 follow further settings, for example to define their own navigation app as the standard. In addition, all Apple apps can now be deleted from the operating system-apart from telephone and settings.

The new browser selection dialogue, which iPhone users should now see more often, seems to have at least a small effect: The number of active users of Firefox almost doubled in Germany, Mozilla recently said. Full-fledged web browsers with its own engine are now permitted at Apple to follow the rules of the DMA-but neither Chrome nor Firefox have implemented this so far.