Apple has been fined €1.8bn (£1.5bn) by the EU after an investigation found it had limited competition from music streaming services such as Spotify.
The fine is nearly four times higher than expected as the European Commission attempts to show it will act decisively on tech companies who abuse their dominant position in the market for online services.
The European competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, said a smaller fine would have been nothing more than the equivalent of a parking fine and the €1.8bn was designed to act as a deterrent against a repetition of such practices by Apple or others.
“I think it is important to see that if you are a company who is dominant and you do something illegal, it will be punished. We want to show our resolve that we will go into these cases.”
As a result of the anti-competitive practices, the public ended up paying more than they should have for music streaming, she said.
pple’s rules ended up harming consumers. Critical information was withheld so that consumers could not effectively use or make informed choices. Some consumers may have paid more because they weren’t aware that they can pay less if they subscribed outside of the app,” Vestager said.
The case followed complaints made by Spotify and centred on Apple’s App Store as the sole gateway for iphone apps.
“Apple’s conduct, which lasted for almost 10 years, may have led many iOS users to pay significantly higher prices for music streaming subscriptions,” the European Commission said in a statement.
Vestager said consumers may have paid two or three euros a month more for music streaming because of the lack of open competition. However, she conceded that the fine would not be distributed to customers who had been allegedly exploited but to individual member states.
She said the fine represented 0.5% of Apple’s global turnover.
The tech company disadvantaged users by restricting app developers from openly promoting cheaper music subscription services available outside the Apple “ecosystem” , the commission found.
“Music streaming developers were not allowed to inform the users inside their own apps of cheaper prices for the same subscription on the internet,” in an “anti-steering” practice, she said.