Two app developers have lodged a complaint with the European Union’s antitrust authority, alleging that Apple deliberately used its control over the App Store to try and give itself an advantage over apps that competed with the firm’s Screen Time feature.
The two companies behind the complaint – Qustodio and Kidslox – both make apps that allow parents to monitor their children’s smartphone use and automatically block them from accessing apps if they exceed pre-set time limits. The companies assert that in the summer of 2018, shortly before the release of its own app-blocking feature, Screen Time, Apple demanded that Qustodio and Kidslox stop using pieces of technology that were critical to their app’s functionality.
In January 2019, Apple informed both firms that if they did not change the way their apps worked it would remove them from the App Store altogether after 30 days. The threat of delisting was later dropped after Apple was made aware that the European Commission was being asked to look into the situation, says Viktor Yevpac, CEO and co-founder of the US-based Kidslox.
This latest complaint, filed on April 25, comes less than six weeks after Spotify submitted its own antitrust complaint against Apple. In March 2019 the music streaming firm filed a complaint to the European Commission arguing that the 30 per cent commission fee Apple takes on in-app purchases amounts to unfair competition, and puts Apple Music at an advantage over Spotify.
Although it is not yet known whether the European Commission will choose to investigate either complaint, Apple is coming under increasing criticism for its App Store policies. Earlier this month the Dutch competition regulator, the Authority for Consumers and Markets, announced it was launching an investigation into whether Apple and Google abused their control over their respective app marketplaces.
In a statement published on Macrumours, Apple's head of marketing, Phil Schiller, said that the firm inhibited the apps because of privacy and security concerns over the way they used MDM. "Protecting user privacy and security is paramount in the Apple ecosystem and we have important App Store guidelines to not allow apps that could pose a threat to consumers privacy and security," he wrote.
The CEOs of Qustodio and Kidslox say that Apple made them both separately aware in the summer of 2018 that their apps were violating an App Store developer guideline that governs how apps use application programming interfaces (APIs) – software rules that tell different systems how to interact with each other.
The two APIs that Apple said were violating its guidelines were both critical to how Qustodio and Kidslox function. The first, a VPN (virtual private network) API, is used by the apps to track the time spent in certain apps and also to filter out inappropriate content, such as pornography. The other API related to mobile device management (MDM), which allowed Qustodio and Kidslox to block apps once their allotted time limit had been exceeded, and give parents some degree of control over their children's devices.
Both Yevpac and Qustodio CEO Eduardo Cruz say that until the summer of 2018 Apple had never raised a complaint about their use of either API. Qustodio, which has two million users worldwide, has been in the App Store since 2013 while Kidslox has been in the App Store since 2014. Other developers of screen-tracking apps, including Mute and Space, removed their apps from the App Store after receiving similar warnings from Apple, although both were later reinstated.
Eturi, a US-based firm that makes parental control apps also had two of its apps pulled from the App Store. The first, OurPact Jr, was removed without notice in October 2018, while the version of the app designed for parents was removed in February 2019, according to a company spokesperson. The parent app had been downloaded by over three million people, and 1.8 million of them paid to subscribe. Approximately 85 per cent of the firm’s revenue comes from iOS subscriptions to OurPact.
“If Apple were truly committed to solving the problem of screen time addiction, they would welcome competition in this space,” says Eturi CEO Amir Moussavian. “We remain committed to solving this problem, and we implore Apple to recognize they have a responsibility to support – if not encourage – the growth of this industry.
Cruz and Yevpac say that Apple’s warnings to them coincided with the release of Screen Time, the screen-blocking app that is built into the latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system, iOS 12. The feature, designed to make it easier for people to track and reduce the time spent on their iPhones was released with iOS 12 in September 2018, eight months after two major Apple shareholders issued a public letter urging the firm to implement tools that would help users limit the time spent on their devices.
“What is happening here is that Apple is trying to lock-in on its own terms on something that existed before,” says Cruz. The Qustodio CEO adds that he doesn’t mind Apple launching Screen Time, but argues that it shouldn’t be able to use the App Store to try and restrict other companies from offering a similar service.
It is now up to the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Competition to decide whether it wants to investigate or reject the complaint made by Qustodio and Kidslox. Such investigations can take years to complete but if Apple is found to be in violation of EU competition rules it could be subject to a significant fine. In 2017 the European Commission fined Google £2.1 billion after it found that it had abused its market dominance by promoting its own shopping comparison service in search results.
But Pablo Ibáñez Colomo, a professor of law at the London School of Economics says that the Commission is likely to tread very carefully when it comes to this most recent complaint as any decision would have a significant impact on how app marketplaces are regulated in the European Union. “Looking into this matter means tackling very difficult technical, economic and legal questions,” he says. It is not clear, for instance, whether the European Commission would define the App Store as a single marketplace or as one part of a larger marketplace.
And there is also the possibility that strong-handed regulation of the App Store, if it came to pass, could have the opposite of the intended effect on competition. Whether the European Commission wants to open up that particular can of worms is a wide-open question. “The moment you start to go down this road, defining the boundaries of what is allowed and what is not, it is very tricky,” says Ibáñez Colomo. “And if you take it too far it may become unmanageable.”
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
