500 million euro fine imposed on Apple by EU for restricting music streaming access, according to reports in technology sector

Apple has reportedly been fined 500 million euros by the European Union over restricting access to its music streaming service, in what would be a landmark blow to the US technology company.

The European Commission is investigating whether Apple prevented music streamers from telling users cheaper ways to subscribe outside of the app store.

According to the Financial Times, the city of Brussels plans to impose a €500m (£427m) fine, a landmark move against Apple after years of complaints from companies offering services through iPhone apps. This is a judgment.

In 2019, Swedish streaming company Spotify filed a complaint with the EU, accusing Apple of limiting choice and competition in its app store by imposing a 30% fee on all purchases. Apple also blocked Spotify and other companies from notifying customers on their phones that they could avoid fees and get better deals simply by signing up on Spotify's website.

Apple says its fees are justified because it spends a lot of money providing a secure app store and gives Spotify access to hundreds of millions of customers. However, Spotify argues that Apple Music, Apple's own music streaming service, does not incur similar additional costs, giving Spotify an advantage and making the rates non-competitive.

The European Commission said Apple's actions were illegal and contrary to European Union rules forcing competition in the single market, the FT reported, citing five people close to the investigation. would argue. The commission could also reportedly ban practices that prevent music services from advertising cheaper subscriptions off-platform.

Apple was fined 1.1 billion euros by France in 2020 for anti-competition agreements with two wholesalers, but has never been hit with a competition fine by the European Commission.

But IT and other big tech companies are under increasing scrutiny due to competitive concerns. Google is appealing against fines of more than 8 billion euros imposed by the EU in three separate competition investigations. Apple lost a lawsuit by Fortnite developer Epic Games that claimed its app store was an illegal monopoly, but Epic won a similar lawsuit against Google, which runs Android phone software, in December. .

Last month, Apple announced it would allow EU customers to download apps without going through its own app store, in response to the EU's digital markets law. The law, whose details were revealed last year, imposes new obligations on “gatekeepers” such as Amazon and Google, which are particularly powerful in controlling the choice of mobile phone software.

The European Commission declined to comment. Apple had no new comments, but pointed to its previous statement that it would respond to the commission's concerns “while promoting competition and choice for European consumers.”