On Monday Polish antimonopoly watchdog UOKIK announced that tech giant Apple will face an investigation. The goal of the investigation is to come to a conclusion about its new privacy policies and see if they, in any way, violate laws on competition.
This year, for Apple, has been filled with one regulatory check or accusation to another but its recent privacy policy is what has kept the company in the “limelight”. In April this year, Apple released an update of its operating system with new privacy features that were targeted at giving their users an edge over digital advertisers and protecting them from being tracked by these digital advertisers.
Social media companies such as Facebook and Snap Inc. were affected by the new privacy policy which put a deep hole in their ad revenue. These companies were badly affected as they needed the personal data of users to be able to send them personalized ads. Snap Inc’s third-quarter reports, for instance, failed to meet the expectation of analysts. This is a result of the privacy changes that Apple introduced earlier this year. This affected the company’s advertising business which makes a huge part of its revenue. The company’s stock fell 25 percent after it reported its earnings. Companies like Facebook and Twitter and other digital advertisers were not left out, although their reports weren’t as bad as that of Snap, their shares were down during that period.
According to the Polish regulator, Apple’s new rules have drastically reduced the ability of third-party apps to have access to the personal data of users in order to send these users personalized ads. In a statement the regulator’s President, Tomasz Chrostny said that “we want to examine whether Apple’s actions may be aimed at eliminating competitors in the market for personalised advertising services, the objective being to better sell their own service. We will investigate whether this is a case of exclusionary abuse of market power”.
Tech titan Apple did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
