France Asks EU to Examine Apple's Removal of AppGratis From the App Store

Thursday April 11, 2013 2:24 pm PDT by Jordan Golson

Appstore France will ask the European Commission for increased regulation following Apple's decision to remove AppGratis from the App Store for violating its developer guidelines, Reuters reports.

During a visit to AppGratis publisher iMediapp, French junior minister for digital economy Fleur Pellerin called Apple's decision "extremely brutal and unilateral....

"This behaviour is not worthy of a company of this size," Pellerin said.

She added that certain Internet companies were guilty of "repeated abusive behaviour" and said she would ask the European Commission and EU member states to better regulate digital platforms, search engines and social media.

Apple has come under European Commission scrutiny in the past for its requirements around the pricing of ebooks, a subject that the United States is currently prosecuting Apple for as well.

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Top Rated Comments

Andrei90

177 months ago

Since when did the EU rule USA?

How ignorant of you sir...

Score: 43 Votes (Like | Disagree)

FirstNTenderbit

177 months ago

Last time I checked, it was Apples' App Store. They own it, they curate it. What is there to examine?

Score: 40 Votes (Like | Disagree)

rmwebs

177 months ago

Last time I checked, it was Apples' App Store. They own it, they curate it. What is there to examine?

I agree in one respect, but in another respect you could turn around and say "Well Windows is Microsoft's operating system, they own it, they are free to stop any non-microsoft application working on it, or anything that competes with them".

Eventually a government (or more likely, the EU and US combined) will open an antitrust case (just as they did with Microsoft) and Apple will be forced to allow 3rd party app installations. Obviously Apple can do it in such a way that makes it more worthwhile for people to go via their appstore, but it wouldnt be at all surprising to see everyone+dog jump on the bandwagon and open a bunch of stores on the iPhone.

You cant have a huge marketshare and block competitors from releasing software for your product. Sure, if you're small enough, nobody will care, but sooner or later, someone will challenge it.

Score: 23 Votes (Like | Disagree)

wschutz

177 months ago

Last time I checked, it was Apples' App Store. They own it, they curate it. What is there to examine?

Last time I checked, Apple has to abide by the laws of each country and union it operates. Lucky us there is one thing called fair competition, that, at least, the EU cares about (or well... the EU citizens and anyone living in EU soil still benefits from and it's just money what rules laws).
Also, AppGratis is produced by a French company... hence it makes sense the company seeks for help at all levels and well... there are many, France and EU...

Since when did the EU rule USA?

Maybe you would like to know that Apple operates under EU law when selling anything in the EU ;)

Score: 20 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Judas1

177 months ago

Agreed.... I don't see anybody regulating the largest retailers and telling them they must carry merchandise from certain vendors. If AppGratis wants to continue their middle-man advertising/marketing business then maybe they should do it on another platform like Android.

Apple is hardly the only platform in town. Nobody forced Costco to carry Apple products when Costco decided that it simply was not profitable for them to waste the floor space on Apple. Apple has similarly decided it was not in their best interest to sell AppGratis on their App Store.

Retail stores don't have to carry items they they don't want to because those items can be sold at other retail stores. With the App Store, an ios app cannot be sold anywhere else. So if Apple can just determine arbitrarily what apps can and can't be sold, they can effectively destroy the software companies because there is no other market (IOS apps will only work on iOS, and can only be bought from the App Store.) That is extraordinary power, and frankly too much power. I don't get why some people can't see this.

Score: 18 Votes (Like | Disagree)