The U.S. Department of Justice says its goal is to “free the smartphone market from Apple’s anti-competitive and exclusionary conduct and restore healthy competition,” but Apple has a different view, arguing that the purpose of the lawsuit is to turn the iPhone into an Android phone.

Apple representatives said the Justice Department lawsuit was essentially an attempt to make iPhones look and operate like Android devices, a move that would actually harm competition.

Apple argued that bringing more Android-like features to the iPhone would actually reduce consumer choice. Apple also tried to guide public opinion, saying that one of the iPhone’s strengths is its privacy and security, and that if the Justice Department wins the case, Apple will have to make major concessions in this regard.

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The lawsuit, filed in June 2022 by consumer advocate Justin Gutman, initially sought compensation from Apple totaling £750 million for up to 25 million iPhone owners in the UK affected by the incident. Since then, the amount of this lawsuit has increased to 1.6 billion pounds plus interest.

Gutmann’s lawyers argued that Apple concealed battery problems in certain phone models and “surreptitiously” installed a power management tool that limited performance.

However, Apple says the lawsuit is “baseless” and strongly denies that iPhone batteries are defective except for a handful of iPhone 6s models, for which it also offers free battery replacements.

Gutman’s lawsuit covers iPhone 6 through iPhone X, and while the Competition Appeal Tribunal ruled it could proceed, it also cited a “lack of clarity and specificity” that needed to be resolved before a formal hearing.

Apple rolled out the iOS 10.2.1 system update in 2017, which included a performance-reducing power management feature to prevent devices with aging batteries from trying to draw peak power during use that the battery couldn’t provide. Apple says it introduced the feature to help extend the life of its devices while reducing unexpected shutdowns, but the company has been criticized for not disclosing what it does and why, with some suggesting it’s trying to cover up the device. Flawed.

Apple later apologized for not better explaining the changes it made and why, and launched a low-price battery replacement program that lasted for several years. Apple in 2020 agreed to pay up to $500 million to settle a long-running class-action lawsuit in the United States over the incident, and the company also faces similar lawsuits in a number of other countries.

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The agency said it was concerned that Apple may be “abusing its dominant position by imposing discriminatory, non-objective and non-transparent terms for the use of user data for advertising purposes.”

In short, the French regulator will investigate whether Apple is unfairly using its monopoly as an app store operator to negatively impact advertising companies.

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According to reports, the complaint was filed in 2020 by four French advertising groups, who claimed that Apple had tweaked its privacy feature, which is known as App Tracking Transparency (ATT), and that it had led to a decline in revenue for publishers.

The four associations (IAB France, MMAF, SRI and UDECAM) said that this privacy change by Apple was not in line with the EU’s privacy regulations, as this mechanism does not apply to Apple’s own apps.

In fact, the investigation is rather contradictory in that they allow the exercise of the right to a defense, but cannot prejudge the guilt or innocence of the company that received notice of the complaint.

Apple has responded to the matter, noting that the regulator has been positive about its data protection policies in the past:

“App Tracking Transparency gives users more initiative by requiring all apps to ask permission before tracking them. Apple, like all other developers, must comply with ATT. apple’s apps do not display ATT prompts because they do not track, which means they do not link user or device data with user or device data collected from other companies’ apps, websites, or offline properties, and they do not share user or device data with data brokers for the purposes of targeted ads or ad measurement”. . In addition, Apple holds its advertising business to a higher standard of privacy than it does for any other developer, and it will require users to expressly consent before delivering personalized ads. We have previously received strong support for ATT’s objectives from regulators and privacy advocates, including from the FCA and CNIL, and we will continue to engage constructively with the FCA to ensure that users always have control over their data.”

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The class action lawsuit was filed by Sean Ennis on behalf of 1,566 developers, alleging that Apple has a monopoly on the distribution of apps on the App Store. Ennis is a professor at the Centre for Competition Policy at the University of East Anglia and a former OECD economist.

Ennis shared a statement with Reuters, which is as follows, “Apple has a monopoly on the distribution of apps on the iPhone and iPad, resulting in app developers paying excessive fees. These fees are inherently unfair and constitute abusive pricing. They hurt app developers and app buyers.”

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The class actions are largely based on a report released by Mysk developers in November 2022, accusing Apple of requiring third-party companies to publish app tracking details on the one hand, and planting device identifiers in anonymous messages on the other.

The fourth class action case was initiated by plaintiff Julia Cima, who filed a lawsuit in the Northern District of California. She argues that Apple has committed numerous violations of privacy laws and competition, and is defending the rights of affected users through a class action lawsuit.

The lawsuit states that Apple has “flagrantly violated consumer privacy” by failing to comply with users’ requests to limit data sharing. Apple restricts the use of identifiers and cross-app tracking by third-party apps but continues to track users in its own apps with app tracking transparency turned on.

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