A French court has sentenced Apple to pay a fine of 1.06 million euros for imposing unfair terms on developers.
A French court has sentenced Apple to pay a fine of 1.06 million euros for imposing unfair terms on developers. The current situation should change over the next few months, by May 2023, when the European Digital Markets Act will enter into force.
A relatively modest fine: 1 million euros on a company with a turnover of almost 400 billion dollars (and which is worth over 1,000 billion) is obviously a negligible incident. Moreover, the French court – as would be the practice in these cases – did not even require Apple to modify its policies in such a way as to put an end to the practice considered illegal. Trivially because it will be the DMA – which will come into force shortly – that will force Apple to change radically its ecosystem of products and services. The effectiveness of the DMA would precede by several months the time limits normally communicated to companies to remedy any unlawful conduct, which is why the French court has chosen to wash its hands of it. In the most serious cases, companies that violate the DMA risk fines of up to 10% of their global turnover.
In the meantime, an Apple spokesman commented on the ruling in neutral tones: “We believe in the need to ensure lively and competitive markets, necessary for innovation to thrive,” he said, and then added that with the App Store he enabled French developers of all sizes to reach millions of users worldwide with their products.
