Apple’s abuse of power

When I jogged down my thought on Senator Warren’s plan to break up Apple, I was wrong when I put:

 I also fail to recall an instance where Apple released a certain product/service and abused its power to favor the product/service.

I failed indeed as it turned out, Apple has, to Spotify.

Spotify has filed an antitrust complaint against Apple, citing its abuse of power to favor its Apple Music. It also launched a website to detail the abusive power of the iPhone maker.

I am still of opinion that there are expenses involved in running AppStore such as security patches, payment, language translation, fraud prevention, and so on. These expenses can be considered justification of the 30% revenue tax imposed by Apple, though it’s not unreasonable to say that it’s a bit too high. Nonetheless, it creates unfair advantages for Apple when the tax is imposed on apps that compete with Apple’s own such as Apple Music as in the case of Spotify. Worse, Apple threw restrictions at Spotify in order to reduce competition for Apple Music as detailed in the website above.

I am genuinely disappointed in myself for the inaccurate statement I made. I still think Senator Warren’s call to break up Apple from AppStore is impractical and over-reaching. However, they do need to answer for the abusive behavior like they have shown to Spotify and should take actions in similar cases moving forward to ensure a fair competition to apps makers.

Lesson learned for me.