Swedish music streaming platform Spotify Technology SA has said Apple Inc.’s agreement to loosen App Store restrictions for small developers does not address the basic aspects of their “anticompetitive and unfair practices”.
“Apple’s recent changes do not address any of the core concerns Spotify and many others have with Apple,” the company said in a tweet, according to a Reuters report.
Spotify in its 2019 complaint to the European Commission said Apple unfairly restricted rivals to its own music streaming service Apple Music and protested against the 30 percent fee levied on app developers to use Apple’s in-app purchase system.
Apple Inc. last week agreed to loosen App Store restrictions on small developers, striking a deal in a class-action lawsuit as the iPhone maker awaits a ruling by the same judge in a separate App Store dispute brought by the developer behind “Fortnite.”
The deal includes changes in how all developers can communicate with customers, an issue highlighted by the judge herself in the Fortnite case.
But Apple kept intact the vast majority of the App Store business practices that have been challenged in courts and legislatures.
Instead it gave up only $100 million, a small sum for a company worth more than $2.4 trillion, and a set of email marketing restrictions that legal experts had said could be difficult to defend even under a prior U.S. Supreme Court case that allows companies to bar their business partners from steering customers toward alternative payment methods.