Apple may be hit with a big antitrust fine in France over App Tracking Transparency

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AppleInsiderAppleInsider
Posted:
in iOS edited March 2

France is probably going to issue an antitrust fine against Apple in March, as the country's consumer watchdog gears up to rule on whether Apple abused its position over App Tracking Transparency.

Smartphone screen showing tracking permission request with options to allow or deny tracking across apps and websites.
An example of an App Tracking Transparency prompt



In July 2023, the French Competition Authority, the Authorite de la Concurrence, said it would open an antitrust investigation into Apple and App Tracking Transparency. Over a year and a half later, the regulator may be concluding its probe.

Two people with knowledge of the regulator's plans told Reuters on Thursday that a ruling will be arriving in March. "The decision is expected in the spring," the regulator confirmed, but declined to comment further.

That ruling is also likely to be accompanied by an antitrust fine, the sources say, but it is unclear how much the fine will end up being. French antitrust fines can be up to 10% of a company's global revenue, which could stretch to the billions of dollars in the case of Apple.

An ATT probe



The regulator's probe activity goes as far back as 2021, when it said it couldn't find fault in ATT ahead of its launch. At the time, authority chief Isabelle de Silva said the regulator couldn't intervene "just because there might be a negative impact for companies in the ecosystem," certainly without any "flagrant examples of discrimination."

That changed two years later, when it confirmed that it would investigate, after it had received a grievance on the way Apple handles the sale and distribution of apps on the App Store. Apple had apparently "abused its dominant position by implementing discriminatory, non-objective, and non-transparent conditions for the use of user data for advertising purposes."

While the regulator didn't state who had raised the complaint, it is likely to be connected to a 2020 complaint from four online advertising groups, concerning App Tracking Transparency. The IAB France, MMAF, UDECAM, and SRI all insisted in 2020 that Apple's changes to create ATT didn't meet EU privacy rules.

At the time the probe was launched, Apple shared a statement to AppleInsider insisting it holds its advertising business "to a higher standard of privacy than it requires of any other developer by prompting users for explicit permission before delivering any personalized ads."

The French antitrust ruling follows after murmurs in Germany from a federal court deliberating whether Apple should be subject to additional controls to encourage competition in the market. The fight with the Bundeskartellamt antitrust regulator also started in 2023.

Germany also launched an antitrust investigation into ATT in 2022.



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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 8
    anonymouseanonymouse Posts: 7,085member
    France, making the world safe for privacy violators. The EU and its member countries have become a joke.
    iOS_Guy80darelrex9secondkox2williamlondonentropysbadmonkwatto_cobra
     7Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 2 of 8
    jgreg728jgreg728 Posts: 120member
    What a joke. How is this for the benefit of the user???? IT GIVES US CHOICE.
    iOS_Guy80darelrex9secondkox2williamlondonentropysbadmonkwatto_cobra
     7Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 3 of 8
    darelrexdarelrex Posts: 146member
    Just in case anyone was unclear, 10% of Apple's current global revenue is roughly equivalent to all the profits Apple has made from all of its products/services in the entire EU (not just France) from January 2007 when Jobs unveiled iPhone, to today. I'm sure Apple will fork over that much money just for the privilege of staying in France for another few months or years until they decide to hit Apple with another fine that big (or twice that big, per the EU's plan for repeat "offenses"). J'en suis tellement sûr.
    badmonkwatto_cobra
     2Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 4 of 8
    9secondkox29secondkox2 Posts: 3,382member
    Leave it to these weirdos to spin consumer privacy protections into a bad thing somehow. 

    If meet any two of the following criteria:
    A. you’re successful in your field. 
    B. You’re from America. 
    C. You’re pro-consumer. 
    D. You don’t work for free. 
    Then Keep your business away from Europe. 

    Sheesh. It’s like they’re begging to return to the dark ages. 
    edited February 27
    entropysbadmonkwatto_cobra
     3Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 5 of 8
    SuntanIronMansuntanironman Posts: 106member

    Two people with knowledge of the regulator's plans told Reuters on Thursday that a ruling will be arriving in March. "The decision is expected in the spring," the regulator confirmed, but declined to comment further.

    The link to the Reuters article is broken (the URL got cutoff). I believe this URL below is to the article you intended to link to:

    https://www.reuters.com/technology/apple-faces-likely-french-antitrust-fine-privacy-tool-sources-say-2025-02-27/
    edited February 27
    nubusbadmonkAlex1Nchasmwatto_cobra
     4Likes 0Dislikes 1Informative
  • Reply 6 of 8
    nubusnubus Posts: 796member
    The corporate culture at Apple could be the reason why we get cases like "we have the right to do price fixing" with iBooks in the US, "we have the right to lower privacy protection in the EU", and the $14B tax evasion. The list of legal battles lost by Apple seems endless - even in the US.

    In this case antitrust indicates that Apple is taking a dominant position in one area to destroy business in another. Most countries have rules against such behavior. The rules apply to local companies as well. For a lengthy legal perspective on the case take a look at:
    https://www.hausfeld.com/nl-be/what-we-think/competition-bulletin/privacy-by-default-abuse-by-design-eu-competition-concerns-about-apple-s-new-app-tracking-policy/
    muthuk_vanalingambadmonkAlex1Nwatto_cobra
     3Likes 1Dislike 0Informatives
  • Reply 7 of 8
    darelrexdarelrex Posts: 146member
    nubus said:
    The corporate culture at Apple could be the reason why we get cases like "we have the right to do price fixing" with iBooks ...
    When Kindle was the only e-book game in town, it set the price of every book, and if you didn't like it, get lost. Then Apple ruined it for them by launching iBooks with the policy "you choose the price of your book and we'll keep 30%". Only in an upside-down world could Apple, not Amazon, get charged with "price fixing" — but if you're the DOJ, you have to go after the deep pocket, not the dry hole of edge-of-profitability Amazon.
    badmonkentropysAlex1Ndavenwatto_cobra
     5Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 8 of 8
    entropysentropys Posts: 4,434member
    darelrex said:
    nubus said:
    The corporate culture at Apple could be the reason why we get cases like "we have the right to do price fixing" with iBooks ...
    When Kindle was the only e-book game in town, it set the price of every book, and if you didn't like it, get lost. Then Apple ruined it for them by launching iBooks with the policy "you choose the price of your book and we'll keep 30%". Only in an upside-down world could Apple, not Amazon, get charged with "price fixing" — but if you're the DOJ, you have to go after the deep pocket, not the dry hole of edge-of-profitability Amazon.
    Yes, and the outcome of course is that Amazon controls the book market, and Apple gave up. What a great job DoJ.
    darelrexAlex1Ndavenwatto_cobra
     4Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
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