European Commissioner for Competition, Margrethe Vestager Photo by Diarmuid Greene/Web Summit via Sportsfile

According to a piece from the Financial Times, The European Union (EU) will officially launch a formal antitrust investigation into Apple in the next few weeks after a complaint from Spotify that claimed Apple “makes it harder and harder for companies” to offer rival streaming services “all for the sake of tilting the field to favor its own services and disadvantaging those it is playing against”.

Spotify’s complaint revolves around a 30% fee charged by Apple for in-app purchases on music subscription services. The music streaming company — which recently hit 100 million paid subscribers — termed the fee as “discriminatory” in its complaint. The company also accused Apple of routinely rejecting “bug fixes and app enhancements that would improve user experience and the app’s functionality”, not allowing an “upgrade to Spotify Premium with ease”, and not letting Spotify available on its HomePod and Siri virtual assistant.

Apple Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, Phil Schiller image: Apple

Apple in defense, said “Spotify wants all the benefits of a free app without being free.” and said majority of its customers make use of their free, ad-supported product which doesn’t generate revenue for the app store. “Spotify wouldn’t be the business they are today without the App Store ecosystem, but now they’re leveraging their scale to avoid contributing to maintaining that ecosystem for the next generation of app entrepreneurs. We think that’s wrong.” Apple said in its statement.

The EU has quite a history with U.S. companies, having previously opened cases against the likes of Mastercard and Visa, Alphabet (came with a $1.7 billion fine), and General Electric ($58 million fine).

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