Antitrust finds Apple guilty of wrongdoing on apps market

MOSCOW, Aug 11 (PRIME) -- Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service has found Apple guilty of abusing its dominating position on the iOS applications market by obstructing developers of parent control applications and opaque rules of admission of applications to App Store, the authority said late on Monday.

“A commission of the Federal Antimonopoly Service of Russia ruled that Apple abused its dominating positon in relation to developers of mobile applications of parent control and restricted competition on the market of distribution of applications of mobile devices, functioning under operating system iOS,” the antitrust service said.

The case was initiated by anti-virus software maker Kaspersky.

The authority found out that Apple with 100% of the market of distribution of mobile applications for iOS has consistently limited tools and options for developers of parent control applications since October 2018.

“We respect the Federal Antimonopoly Service of Russia, but we disagree with their decision and plan to contest it,” an Apple official told PRIME.

Apple said it created App Store as an iPhone function of a safe and reliable store of applications for its users and a resource of business for developers. The U.S. company’s official said Apple cooperated with Kaspersky so that their applications would be up to the new standards.

“At present, this developer places 13 applications in App Store, and we’ve processed and released hundreds of updates for them,” the Apple representative said.

Kaspersky hopes Apple would improve its policy and attitude toward competitors, head of Kaspersky’s intellectual property department Nadezhda Kashchenko told PRIME.

“We’re happy with the case’s outcome, chiefly because abuse by large corporations and transfer of their market power with negative impacts on competition on the adjacent markets should be stopped. Healthy competition serves progress, and users win,” she said.

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