Apple has been facing increased antitrust scrutiny in Germany since a new law came into effect, and the company has now lost its latest appeal.
The Bundeskartellamt (Federal Cartel Office) had argued that it should have the right to directly order Apple to make changes to the way that it runs the App Store, and a court has now granted it this right …
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After the EU forced Apple to implement major changes to how iOS and the App Store work for European users, other countries have also conducted their own antitrust investigations against the company. Now the Brazilian court has ruled that Apple has 90 days to allow sideloading on iOS for iPhone users in Brazil.
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In late 2022, initial payments for the Small Developer Assistance Fund started going out, with each eligible US developer receiving at least $1000 – up to 4x the projected minimum payout. A second round of payouts begun toward the end of 2023, and now the third and final round of payments started going out this week.
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At least nine US states are considering legislation that would make app store owners like Apple and Google responsible for age verification before giving access to apps with minimum age requirements. Currently the legal responsibility lies with developers.
The issue is most applicable to social media apps, which typically have a minimum age of 13, and is an approach advocated by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg …
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Apple last year announced an important change coming to the App Store in the EU that would force developers to share their contact information with customers in some cases. Now that the deadline has arrived, Apple is removing apps from developers who haven’t shared their ‘trader’ contact information from the EU App Store.
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The Brazilian antitrust regulator has been investigating Apple for imposing anti-competitive terms and conditions on the App Store. Although the company was given more time to make its case after a judge overturned an injunction against the App Store last year, Apple will now have to face a public hearing in Brazil on the case.
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Game makers Square Enix today announced that the iOS version of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles has reached its sudden end. The reason is a strange one: an unfixable bug that Square Enix says is related to recent In-App Purchase “model” changes.
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Apple on Tuesday announced a quiet but important update when it comes to the Apple Account. As of today, the company now allows users to migrate their purchases between different Apple Accounts so that people who have two accounts can consolidate them.
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Both Apple and Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney have provided responses below…
Apple has been legally required to approve a pornography app for iPhone users in EU markets due to regulatory actions put in place by Europe’s Digital Markets Act. Since launching the App Store in 2008, Apple’s policy has been to prevent apps explicitly for distributing pornography from being listed in the App Store.
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DeepSeek privacy concerns have led to investigations being opened in both the US and Europe, and seen the app removed from the App Store in Italy. It seems likely the same will happen in other countries.
Italian’s privacy regulator questioned whether the app complied with GDPR, a tough privacy law that applies across 30 different countries …
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Apple’s developer site has shared news of a new API coming for apps that will offer expanded options for managing In-App Purchases. It’s called the Advanced Commerce API, and here’s what we know so far.
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India remains Apple’s largest market opportunity after China. Growing the business in India, however, has always required a bit of compromise with the local government. In 2019, it was a small investment of $1 billion that helped unlock iPhone exports from India. More recently, India has pressured Apple to put its government-backed app store on the iPhone.
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The UK government today announced that the Competition and Markets Authority has launched strategic market status investigations into mobile ecosystems, specifically the App Store models of iPhone and Android.
The report says it will assess Apple’s market power, and potential exploitative conduct. This includes options for app distribution to customers, and the terms app developers must agree to to be listed in the App Store in the first place.
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TikTok’s deactivation for US users may have been short-lived, but the app is still missing from the iPhone’s App Store. Here’s why one lawyer says Apple can’t bring it back yet.
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The TikTok ban which came into effect on Sunday has been suspended for 75 days by an executive order signed by President Trump on his inauguration day. He has also said that US companies who provide services to TikTok during this time will not be prosecuted.
However, legal scholars note that Trump’s order does not appear to comply with the law, and say that companies who make TikTok available remain liable for hundreds of billions of dollars of fines, so Apple is unlikely to return the app to the App Store …
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It’s been a tumultuous several days for TikTok in the United States. The app went offline on Saturday night and was removed from the App Store by Apple. On Sunday afternoon, however, TikTok restored service in the United States thanks to “necessary clarity” provided by President Trump.
Despite TikTok being online once again in the United States, however, the app remains unavailable from the App Store. Here’s what you need to know about that ever-evolving situation.
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Apple’s incoming CFO didn’t get much time to settle in before he found himself in court defending the company against a class action lawsuit. Kevan Parekh yesterday claimed that the company that it has no clue about its App Store profit margin.
This is a stance the company has taken before. Indeed, Apple Fellow Phil Schiller even went as far as to claim he didn’t even know whether the App Store made a profit at all …
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TikTok risks being banned from the US in the coming days as a bill signed by President Biden requires its parent company ByteDance to divest from the app. Amid the risk of a potential ban, users are already looking for alternatives – and another Chinese social network has just topped the US App Store rankings.
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Apple was already facing a $1B lawsuit on behalf of British developers, but is now up against an even larger one on behalf of app buyers in the UK.
Both antitrust lawsuits have the same basis – that Apple is abusing its monopolistic control over the sale of iPhone apps to charge excessive commissions …
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Apple occasionally updates the App Store’s layout to make it easier to navigate, or emphasize one content section or another. But new changes recently rolled out that are especially prominent, and make new app discovery easier than ever on iPhone and more.
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Apple and Google have been fined R$19 million (about US$3.1 million) in Brazil after a judge ruled that the companies contributed to allowing the controversial photo editor FaceApp to improperly collect data from its users. The app has a long history of questionable privacy policies.
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The Chinese government forced Apple to remove VPN apps from the App Store there way back in 2017, and the company is now having to do the same in India.
So far, a small number of VPN apps have been removed to comply with an anti-privacy law barring anonymous use, but many more are likely to follow …
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Even a brief review of the App Store revealed more than 200 “risky or inappropriate” apps rated as ok for children, according to a new report. They had collectively notched up more than 550 million downloads.
Two child safety groups say that more than 25% of the child-rated apps they reviewed gave cause for concern, suggesting that the total number of problematic apps is very much higher …
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Analytics data suggests that we’re downloading fewer iPhone apps this year than last, but spending significantly more money on them. That’s because almost half of developer revenue now comes from subscriptions.
App Store downloads declined slightly in the past 12 months, but the total spend increased dramatically from $73.7B last year to $91.6B this year …
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