The penalty, announced by the bloc’s antitrust regulator, is the culmination of a five-year investigation set in motion by one of Apple’s biggest rivals, Spotify.
| Apple on Monday was fined €1.8 billion by European Union regulators for thwarting competition among music streaming rivals, a severe punishment levied against the tech giant in a long-simmering battle over the powerful role it plays as gatekeeper of the App Store.
In a briefing last month, Apple said European regulators had been searching for a legal theory for the case for almost a decade, in fits and starts. Apple challenged the idea thatusers have not been able to subscribe to music services through other means, saying that Spotify had added more than 100 million subscribers outside its app over the past eight years.
In 2022, the 27-nation bloc largely sided with developers in writing the Digital Markets Act that requires Apple to open the iPhone to competing app stores and allow app-makers to directly accept payments. The rules go into effect on Thursday. Under Apple’s plan, Spotify and other apps would be able to tell customers in their app about cheaper subscription prices online.Apple’s proposal for the App Store in Europe has sparked an outcry from developers large and small, who say it fails to abide by both the letter and spirit of the law.
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