The European Commission has announced it will launch new investigations into Apple’s suspected violations of EU competition law.
One investigation concerns the App Store: partly Apple’s imposition of a 30% revenue cut, and partly the fact that developers aren’t allowed to highlight, within their apps, alternative payment methods for their services. As we’ve noted before, Spotify has been one of the leading voices protesting against these practices – in May the company’s boss commented that Apple’s platform is still not open and fair.
The second investigation concerns Apple Pay and the fact that other mobile payment systems aren’t allowed to use the built-in NFC chip in the iPhone.
“It’s disappointing the European Commission is advancing baseless complaints from a handful of companies who simply want a free ride, and don’t want to play by the same rules as everyone else,” said a spokesman for Apple in a statement quoted by MacRumors.
Earlier this week we reported that the US House of Representatives is going to question executives from Apple (as well from Amazon, Facebook and Alphabet) over anticompetition concerns.
The European Commission says the investigations will be a matter of priority, but it could still take a long time to reach a decision.
This article originally appeared on Macworld Sweden. Translation by David Price.