Italy’s competition authority opens probe into Apple

The Italian Competition Authority (AGCM) initiated an investigation against the US tech giant Apple for allegedly abusing its dominant position in the app market. AGCM accused Apple of imposing a more restrictive privacy policy on third-party app developers and has put them in a disadvantageous position regarding the “quality of the data made available by Apple.”AGCM stated that third-party developers are offered less information regarding their ads campaign’s success and that such discriminatory conduct may cause a fall in advertising revenues which will result in benefiting Apple’s internal apps. AGCM warned that this may lead to a decrease in competition in the app development and distribution market, as competitors may be driven away.