The Italian competition authority (AGCM) has fined US tech giant Apple (AAPL.O) and two of its units €98.6 million ($115.53 million) for allegedly abusing their dominant position in the mobile app market.
The regulator said the group had violated European regulations with Apple's App Store, where it held "absolute dominance" in its dealings with third-party developers, Reuters reported.
The watchdog opened an investigation into the tech giant in May 2023, alleging that the company penalized third-party app developers by imposing "more restrictive privacy policies" on them. as of April 2021.
Apple said it “strongly disagrees“ with the decision, which it said “ignores the important privacy protections” provided by the company’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) requirement.
The AGCM said Apple required third-party developers to obtain specific consent to collect data and link data for advertising purposes through the ATT verification process imposed by the company.
“The terms of the ATT policy are imposed unilaterally, are detrimental to the interests of Apple’s business partners and are disproportionate to achieving the privacy objective claimed by the company,“ the regulator said in a statement, adding that the process was not in line with privacy regulations.
Developers were further forced to duplicate consent requests for the same purpose, the company added.
ATT was created “to give "users have an easy way to control whether companies can track their activity across other apps and websites," the tech company said, adding that the rules apply equally to all developers, including Apple. The company will appeal the regulator's decision and reiterated its commitment to "protecting strong privacy protections." The AGCM said the investigation was complex and was conducted in coordination with the European Commission and other international antitrust regulators.