Apple Paid the Netherlands €50 Million as It Dragged Its Feet on Legal Compliance ⇥ acm.nl
Following productive conversations with the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM), today we’re introducing additional adjustments to Apple’s plan to comply with the regulator’s order pertaining to dating apps on the App Store in the Netherlands […]
The Dutch Authority for Consumers and Markets is satisfied with these changes:
Apple has changed its unfair conditions, and will now allow different methods of payment in Dutch dating apps. With this concession, Apple will meet the requirements that the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) set under European and Dutch competition rules. Until recently, customers of dating apps had only been able to pay using the payment method that Apple imposed. In ACM’s opinion, Apple abused its dominant position with those practices. From now on, dating-app providers are able to let their customers pay in different ways. ACM forced these changes by imposing an order subject to periodic penalty payments. In the end, the sum of all penalty payments totaled 50 million euros.
The changes Apple has made since it announced how it planned to comply with the Dutch regulators’ rules in February have consistently been in the direction of increased ease for developers and a somewhat less petulant response from Apple. I am not sure if there was some technical problem prohibiting Apple from reducing its commission on subscriptions purchased through third-party providers until now, but it looked from the outside like Apple was delaying and minimizing its compliance.