Le Figaro and L'Équipe file a complaint against Apple and its App Store

The App Store logo.

AP - Patrick Semansky

Text by: RFI Follow

1 min

In France, the newspapers

Le Figaro

and

L'Équipe

and other online content publishers filed a complaint against Apple and its monopoly on Monday August 1.

In their complaint filed with the federal court in Oakland, California, these media accuse the Apple brand of offering only one possibility to its users to access applications: the App Store.

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Associated with Le Geste, an association that represents publishers of online content and services, the French newspapers

Le Figaro

and

L'Équipe

are attacking Apple.

Like many other developers around the world, they accuse the American giant of holding an " 

anti-competitive and unjustifiable monopoly

 " preventing any competition from taking hold in the application market.

The Apple brand takes a share of revenue from all the applications available on its

App Store

platform .

Concretely, Apple takes a 30% commission on transactions, via its payment system, installed on the App Store.

For its part, the company ensures that its platform guarantees buyers secure payments.

“ 

Apple has cornered the market for distributing apps on iOS (…) but not because it has built the best store.

Apple deliberately built a monopoly by blocking any potential competition through technical means and contracts with developers.

Apple's actions are designed to destroy competition

 ,” the plaintiffs argue.

This is not the first time that Apple has been accused of abuse of a dominant position.

In 2020,

Epic Games, the American publisher of the very popular Fortnite video game

, filed a complaint against the Apple brand for this monopoly issue.

States also denounce this type of commercial practice.

Last year, South Korea passed legislation that requires Apple to offer an alternative payment system.

(With AFP)

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