Italy fined Apple 98.6 million euros for abusing its dominant market position

The Italian Competition Authority has fined US tech giant Apple and two of its departments 98.6 million euros for allegedly abusing its dominant position in the mobile application market.

Reuters reported that Italian regulators said on Monday (December 22) that Apple was suspected of violating relevant European regulations and that its App Store had an "absolute dominant position" in transactions with third-party developers.

Apple has not commented on this yet. The regulatory body launched an investigation into the tech giant in May 2023, claiming that the company had imposed "stricter privacy policies" on third-party app developers since April 2021, thereby punishing developers.

The Italian Competition Authority said that Apple requires third-party developers to obtain users' explicit consent for data collection and data association for advertising purposes through the prompt of "App Tracking Transparency" (ATT), an interface mandatorily set by Apple.

The regulatory body issued a statement saying: "The terms of AT&T's policy are unilaterally imposed, which have harmed the interests of Apple's business partners and have not been commensurate with achieving privacy protection goals as the company claims."

The statement also said that the process did not comply with privacy regulations, and developers were also forced to repeatedly seek users' consent for the same purpose.

The regulatory body said that the investigation process was complex and was coordinated with the European Commission and other international competition and antitrust regulatory bodies.