It looks like Apple is about to make history – as the first company to receive a fine under the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA).
According to a new report from Bloomberg, the European Commission is planning to slap Apple with a fine of as much as 10 percent of the company’s global annual sales.
The EU would levy the fine as a result of Apple’s failure to let third-party app developers promote cheaper deals for their software outside the App Store.
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Mashable reported in June that the Europe Commission was investigating Apple for breaching its DMA laws, which went into effect in November 2022.
Apple was previously hit with a whopping $2 billion fine earlier this year for similarly restricting the music streaming service Spotify from promoting cheaper deals outside of the App Store inside of its app. However, the EU doled out that fine under its traditional antitrust rules.
The EU instituted the DMA in order to further spur competition within industries typically dominated by Big Tech companies. The DMA requires that large tech companies, deemed gatekeepers, allow for open competition from third-party entities on their core platforms.
The DMA has already forced Apple to make sweeping changes to its core platform services, like the App Store, in the EU. Still, Apple is being further investigated by the European Commission for failing to do so in other areas of core platforms that it operates. It’s very possible that whatever the final total for this penalty is for Apple, it’s just the first in a number of fines to come.