Apple can’t ignore antitrust outcry

Cupertino, we have a problem. Apple Inc kicked off its Worldwide Developers Conference — a week-long annual event for the millions of programmers who create the apps that are enjoyed by roughly a billion iPhone users. It’s meant to be a platform for celebrating the tech giant’s developer community, but this year the backdrop is different — and not just because the conference is being held entirely online for the first time. This time around, the festivities arrive just as Apple faces fresh scrutiny about the fairness of its App Store policies. There is a rising chorus of criticism over Apple’s business practices and how the company treats its partners, and the company will have trouble sidestepping the debate.
The issue came to the fore last week, when the European Union said it opened two formal antitrust investigations into Apple. One of the probes is centred around Apple’s requirements on when companies are required to use the App Store’s in-app purchase system, where it charges developers up to a 30% cut for digital content or services sold on its platform. Soon after that news hit, well-known Basecamp developer David Heinemeier Hansson accused Apple of a “shakedown” in rejecting the latest revision of his company’s Hey email app. After an initial approval, Apple later decided the Hey app didn’t deserve an exemption from using its in-app payment system, and thus would
be required to use Apple’s billing service — and be subject to the fees that go with it — or face being kicked out of the app store.
Hansson’s willingness to call out Apple publicly unleashed a tidal wave of similar negative commentary from other developers, who resent what they see as Apple’s arbitrary enforcement and seemingly haphazard rule set in its App Store Review Guidelines. Some complained Apple’s fee structure was way too high, while others wrote about their similar domineering treatment experiences going through Apple’s app approval process. As the anecdotes piled up throughout the week, many journalists and bloggers increasingly took the side of developers. Of course, it didn’t help that Apple had already granted exceptions to larger companies including Netflix Inc and Amazon.com, Inc under special category exemptions and negotiated deals.
And it wasn’t only the developer community that was up in arms. Other larger technology companies and politicians felt compelled to weigh in amid the firestorm. Microsoft President Brad Smith said regulators should review Apple’s App Store practices, saying today’s digital mobile stores now had far “higher walls and far more formidable gates” against competition than when Microsoft’s Windows operating system did two decades ago during the company’s own antitrust battle.
The ability to offer more choice to consumers is the main request by the developers who are criticising Apple’s policies.

—Bloomberg