A lawsuit claims the policy was stricter toward third-party developers than Apple itself.
Apple is facing another battle over its App Tracking Transparency (ATT) policy. A former official at the Competition and Markets Authority – the UK’s antitrust watchdog – has filed a £2 billion ($2.7 billion) lawsuit on behalf of app developers. According to ReutersThe suit accuses Apple of imposing stricter rules on external developers than on its own services, thereby giving an advantage to the company’s advertising ecosystem.
ATT debuted in 2021, ostensibly to give users more control over how much of their activities app developers can track across other apps and websites. The company said Reuters he was “bound to exactly the same requirements as all developers”.
However, regulators across Europe, including France, Italy and Poland, have investigated the TCA. Germany’s competition regulator, the Federal Cartel Office, determined last month that Apple favored its own apps over those of external developers. He said the ATT pop-ups used by Apple for its services “had the potential to encourage users to provide consent, while they had the potential to discourage consent for third-party apps.” As such, the company has agreed to make some changes to how ATT operates in the European Union. This follows the French competition authority fining Apple €150 million ($175 million at current rates) for ATT last year.
