Friday, February 18, 2011

Subscriptions App Store in the U.S. and EU Antitrust lens

The U.S. and European antitrust agencies are investigating about the new subscription policy launched by Apple last February 15. The investigations, for now, are only informal. The bodies, in fact, are considering whether Apple will profile the case of abuse of dominant position in online publishing.

The new rules spread from Cupertino, in fact, there are explicit vetoes against publishers. The latter can not be included in their App external link that points to any subscription services outside the Apple ecosystem. It should be pointed out that, however, the new policy was regarded as less restrictive than the previous ones: the publishers, in fact, allowed to see products and content outside of the individual app, such as their reference sites.

At the same time calls for subscriptions on Apple App Store to be present at an economical price, or at least not higher than the same offers on other channels. In short, Apple claims that publishers not download the user rate of 30% which ends up in the coffers of Cupertino, through the ad hoc increase in the price of content offered on the App Store.

The prohibition on external links as well as restrictions on prices are the two aspects on which the American and European regulators would be more concentrated. For now we are at a level of informal inquiry, an investigation which may be affected by the outcome of these first preliminary investigations or any change of policy by Apple.

Before any official action, therefore, need to ensure the dominance of Apple in the areas concerned and a clear policy to sfruttrare that position. It might take some time.

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