On March 4th, technology giant Apple was fined 1.8 billion euros (approximately 14 billion yuan) by EU regulatory authorities for preventing music streaming platforms such as Spotify from providing users with more favorable subscription services outside of the Apple App Store.
The EU's investigation into Apple originated from a complaint filed by Swedish music streaming giant Spotify in 2019. Spotify believes that by leveraging the dominant position of the iOS system and app store, Apple has taken advantage of its own music streaming services by offering 30% unreasonable fee rebates and restricting Spotify and other music streaming platforms from offering users lower subscription rates.
Margrethe Vestager, the EU antitrust director, stated that for the past decade, Apple has abused its market dominance in distributing music streaming applications through app stores, limiting developers from informing consumers of more favorable services outside of the Apple ecosystem, which violates EU antitrust rules.
After the EU's penalty decision was announced, Apple issued a statement on its official website, stating that the European Commission had failed to confirm that any consumer's interests had been harmed and had imposed the penalty, ignoring the fact that the music streaming market was thriving, fiercely competitive, and rapidly growing. It also pointed out that Spotify had met with the European Commission more than 65 times during this investigation, and Spotify was the main supporter of this penalty decision, It is also the biggest beneficiary.
Apple responded that Spotify currently holds 56% of the music streaming market in Europe, more than twice as much as its closest competitor, but has never paid Apple any fees for the services it receives to help it become a globally renowned brand.
Apple believes that in the geometrically growing digital music market, European consumers have more choices than ever before. "Ironically, the decision announced today consolidates a successful European company's leading position in the digital music market in the name of competition." Apple said it will appeal the decision.