German antitrust watchdog now monitoring Apple-Epic battle

Germany's Federal Cartel Office is now watching Apple's ongoing battle with "Fortnite" developer Epic, hints at opening an antitrust probe.

On August 28, Apple followed through with a promise to shut down Epic's developer account after the company failed to comply with Apple's App Store terms of service. Epic attempted to block the action by filing a restraining order, but a U.S. District Court denied the request.

The move has garnered much attention from public and press alike, and now draws the attention of Germany's Federal Cartel Office.

"This has most certainly attracted our interest," Andreas Mundt, head of the Federal Cartel Office told Reuters. "We are at the beginning, but we are looking at this very closely."

In an online briefing, Mundt pointed out that the Google Play Store and Apple's App Store represent "an interesting habitat, because they are the only two worldwide."

While the Federal Cartel Office can impose fines, it's likely that officials would attempt to institute change the way the app stores worked instead.

As Reuters points out, the German authority had reached an agreement last year with Amazon regarding merchants who use the service. Facebook is currently appealing an order that would require it to curb its collection of user data.

11 Comments

elijahg 2842 comments · 18 Years

About 4 years ago

Even if Apple wins most of the antitrust lawsuits against them, they're unlikely to win all of them. And where they don't win, they'll end up being forced to allow sideloading and/or reducing the 30% cut. If sideloading is forced, there will be a two-tier system where some countries have more open iPhones and some that don't. I'm not sure a two-tier system is really sustainable but if Apple chooses that route, then it will be interesting to have a control group to see if more open iPhones will end up full of malware as some here claim.

aderutter 625 comments · 17 Years

About 4 years ago

If Apple does get forced to allow other app-stores it should let users know that installing a third party non-apple-approved app will disable all the Apple authored apps to ensure their security is not compromised. So, if you install the Epic app-store for example you can say goodbye to Safari, the official Apple App-Store app, Mail, Calendar, Notes, GarageBand, Pages etc.

Gilliam_Bates 198 comments · 9 Years

About 4 years ago

aderutter said:

If Apple does get forced to allow other app-stores it should let users know that installing a third party non-apple-approved app will disable all the Apple authored apps to ensure their security is not compromised. So, if you install the Epic app-store for example you can say goodbye to Safari, the official Apple App-Store app, Mail, Calendar, Notes, GarageBand, Pages etc.

And even more than so. They could say goodbye to any app trying to access common resources like photo album, address book etc. Virtually any app trying to access resources extarnal to it would be stopped, since these resources could be tampered with or confusing the user when trying to access. In principle, you could either run the apps from this alternative App Store OR anything else of what you have today, but not both. And this is actually the situation you already have when you jailbreak your iDevice. So, all you enemies of the App Store: stop whining! You already have the results of your wishes in place. Don't you like it?

bigmushroom 87 comments · 11 Years

About 4 years ago

Gilliam_Bates said:

aderutter said:

If Apple does get forced to allow other app-stores it should let users know that installing a third party non-apple-approved app will disable all the Apple authored apps to ensure their security is not compromised. So, if you install the Epic app-store for example you can say goodbye to Safari, the official Apple App-Store app, Mail, Calendar, Notes, GarageBand, Pages etc.

And even more than so. They could say goodbye to any app trying to access common resources like photo album, address book etc. Virtually any app trying to access resources extarnal to it would be stopped, since these resources could be tampered with or confusing the user when trying to access. In principle, you could either run the apps from this alternative App Store OR anything else of what you have today, but not both. And this is actually the situation you already have when you jailbreak your iDevice. So, all you enemies of the App Store: stop whining! You already have the results of your wishes in place. Don't you like it?

I just wonder why Mac users are still allowed to install programs outside the store - according to your policy apple should disable everything on Macs as soon as you download adobe from the web.

22july2013 3736 comments · 11 Years

About 4 years ago

elijahg said:

And where they don't win, they'll end up being forced to allow sideloading and/or reducing the 30% cut..

Not really. Nobody can force Apple to sell iPhones in any country. Apple is completely free to either stop selling iPhones or to stop selling software through an App Store. Nobody can force Apple to sell anything to anyone. If Apple took one of these two routes for a given country, it would virtually force the jurisdiction to remove their restrictions.