Why are the Apple and Google empires facing antitrust investigations in the UK?!
Britain's competition regulator on Thursday launched an investigation into the vast mobile ecosystems of Apple and Google to determine whether the tech titans are violating the United Kingdom's strict new digital competition rules.
The UK Competition and Markets Authority said it was opening dual investigations into the two US tech giants to assess whether they hold "strategic market status" in their respective mobile ecosystems, including smartphone-based operating systems, app stores and browsers.
The investigations will “explore the impact on people who use mobile devices and the thousands of businesses that develop innovative services or content such as apps for these devices,” the CMA said. “Apple believes in thriving and dynamic markets where innovation can flourish,” an Apple spokesperson told CNBC. “We face competition in every segment and jurisdiction in which we operate and our focus is always on the trust of our users.”
"In the UK alone, the iOS app economy supports hundreds of thousands of jobs and enables developers large and small to reach users on a trusted platform," the Apple spokesperson added. "We will continue to engage constructively with the CMA as their work on this matter progresses."
The CMA now has expanded regulatory powers after a new UK law, called the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumer Act, or DMCC, came into force earlier this year.
The DMCC seeks to prevent anti-competitive behaviour in digital markets. It can designate large companies that have a significant amount of market power in a particular digital activity as having “strategic market status”. The CMA now has the power to impose changes to prevent potential anti-competitive behaviour by any firm granted strategic market status.
According to the regulator, virtually all mobile devices sold in the UK come pre-installed with Apple's iOS or Google's Android operating systems, and their app stores and browsers have exclusive or leading positions on their platforms compared to alternative products and services.
Almost all (94%) of people aged 16 and over, around 56 million consumers in the UK currently have access to a smartphone and the average Briton spends around three hours a day using a mobile device, the CMA added.
The body said it would examine three key issues, including the degree of competition between Apple and Google's mobile ecosystems, the tech giants' potential exploitation of their market power in other activities, and potential exploitative behavior.
“More competitive mobile ecosystems can drive new innovation and new opportunities across a range of services that millions of people use, whether they are app stores, browsers or operating systems,” Sarah Cardell, chief executive of the CMA, said in a statement on Thursday. “Better competition can also drive growth here in the UK, with businesses able to offer new and innovative types of products and services on Apple and Google platforms,” Cardell added.
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