With the European Commission’s formal investigations of Apple getting underway, Spotify has seen some people and companies rallying to its antitrust cause this week. For example, the chairman of the US House’s antitrust subcommittee has been (perhaps surprisingly, given that role?) outspoken on the topic, in an interview with The Verge.
“Because of the market power that Apple has, it is charging exorbitant rents — highway robbery, basically — bullying people to pay 30 percent or denying access to their market,” said David Cisilline. Oof.
Other Apple critics this week include Tim Sweeney, CEO of Fortnite-maker Epic Games (“Here Apple speaks of a level playing field. To me, this means: All iOS developers are free to process payments directly, all users are free to install software from any source”) and Tinder’s parent company Match (“Apple squeezes industries like e-books, music and video streaming, cloud storage, gaming and online dating for 30% of their revenue, which is all the more alarming when Apple then enters that space, as we’ve repeatedly seen”).
Even Microsoft, no stranger to antitrust battles, has joined the fray, while there’s a row brewing over Apple’s rejections of the Facebook Gaming iOS app – five times so far apparently – because it has App Store-like features.
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