AUSTRALIAN APPSTORE ANDROID
While Google allows third parties to develop app stores that compete with Google’s own Play Store on Android devices, Apple prohibits anyone other than itself from selling apps, in-game purchases or services on iPhones and iPads. It’s now taken that same dispute directly to the ACCC, which was already investigating whether Apple and Google wield too much power, and whether they abuse that power through their app stores.
AUSTRALIAN APPSTORE SOFTWARE
In that case, which has yet to come to trial but which mirrors similar cases in the US and UK, Epic alleged Apple’s app store breached multiple sections of the Competition and Consumer Act (CCA), as well as the Australian Consumer Law, because it illegally “forces Epic (and other app developers) to only use Apple’s App Store to distribute its software applications … to the broad base of iOS device users, and to only use Apple’s payment platform for purchases of their in-app content by iOS device users”. Apple’s “unrestrained market power” is artificially jacking up the price of phone and tablet apps and suppressing competition and innovation in a key gateway to the Australian economy, one of the world’s most successful app developers has warned Australia’s market regulator.Įpic Games, maker of the smash hit video game Fortnite, has told the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission that Apple’s stranglehold on iPhone and iPad app distribution and billing is forcing app developers to pay a 30 per cent “Apple tax” on all the games they sell, when the true commission should be closer to the single-digit commissions paid in other markets.Īpple has blocked Fortnite from iPhones for reasons its creator says are illegal and anti-competitive.Įpic Games sued Apple in the Federal Court of Australia last year, after Apple blocked Epic’s games from appearing in the App Store as part of a long-running dispute over payments.