The EU will reportedly investigate Apple over Spotify’s anti-competitive complaint

Back in March, we learned that Spotify had filed a new complaint with the European Union's antitrust regulators, claiming that Apple's App Store rules were anti-competitive. Spotify publicised this by putting out the open letter ‘Time to Play Fair', which Apple swiftly responded to and tackled point by point. Now, it is being reported that the EU will be investigating Apple over Spotify's claims.

As reported by the Financial Times, the EU began surveying customers and rival companies following Spotify's anti-trust complaint. Now a formal investigation into Apple's App Store rules should begin before the end of this month.

There are several complaints that Spotify has laid out, from Apple's app review and update review processes, all the way to the 30% Apple tax, which applies to paid subscriptions. Apple does take a 30 percent cut for the first year of an annual subscription but drops this to 15 percent from year 2 onward.

Apple has responded to all of Spotify's ‘Time to Play Fair‘ claims and naturally disagrees that it is harming competition. Ultimately though, the EU will have to investigate and make up its own mind on the matter, a process that could take quite some time. If an antitrust ruling is made against Apple, then it could face a huge fine worth billions of dollars.

KitGuru Says: The EU will be launching an investigation, so we'll be hearing more about this in the weeks and months to come. Service platform revenue cuts have been a big topic of discussion lately in gaming thanks to the Epic Games Store and its effort to compete against Steam. Now it looks like we'll be seeing similar conversations on the mobile market. 

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