Japanese FTC is Investigating Apple and Google Smartphone Abuses
- Paul Thurrott
- Oct 07, 2021
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Japan’s Fair Trade Commission announced that it is investigating Apple and Google for abusing their dominance in the smartphone market.
News of the investigation comes via Nikkei Asia, which reports that the JFTC, which had previously found Apple’s App Store to be anticompetitive, was now studying whether Apple and Google are abusing their mobile duopoly by “eliminating competition and severely limiting options for consumers.” The investigation will extend to smartphones and wearables, too, a market in which only Apple is dominant.
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Apple owns about 70 percent of the smartphone market in Japan, the report adds, compared to 30 percent for Google’s Android.
The Commission had previously investigated Apple’s App Store and found that it was anti-competitive for Apple to force developers to pay its in-app purchase fees. Apple settled that case and announced that it would benevolently allow developers of so-called “reader apps” to not pay these fees. But the settlement left out most of the impacted apps, like those that deliver game subscription content.