The Apple logo is seen at the entrance to the Fifth Avenue Apple store in New York. Photo: AFPItaly’s antitrust regulator said Thursday it has opened an investigation into tech giant Apple for allegedly abusing a dominant position in the apps market.
The Silicon Valley titan “has adopted a more restrictive privacy policy for third-party app developers than it applies to itself,” the competition watchdog said in a statement. It said it was also concerned third-party developers and advertisers were “disadvantaged in terms of the quality of the data made available by Apple”.
The “alleged discriminatory conduct” could cause a drop in advertising revenues of third-party advertisers and prevent competitors from entering or remaining in the app development and distribution market, benefiting Apple’s own apps, it added.