14 DAY TRIAL // Apple could be the subject of new investigation in Europe, as the European Commission is looking into the way the Cupertino-based tech giant implemented Apple Play and the NFC chip into the iPhone and whether the company violates anti-competitive market practices.
While an investigation hasn’t yet started, EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager’s office is indeed analyzing these concerns, according to a report from Bloomberg.
Furthermore, a series of third-parties, including here mobile-payment providers, banks, and even app developers have recently been requested to provide information on how Apple might be blocking other payment solutions and favoring its own on the iPhone.
“In this context, the commission is actively monitoring the development of mobile payment solutions, the behavior by operators active in the payments sector, including mobile payments,” the EU was quoted as saying. The EU, however, has refused to specifically name Apple as the subject of this probe.
Third-party wallets on Android
On the other hand, concerns over the way Apple blocks other companies from launching payment solutions on the iPhones have repeatedly made the rounds in the last months.
With iPhones only offering Apple Pay, the payment service has become a major catalyst of Apple’s services unit, with the company itself admitting that this particular product is growing at a very fast pace.
Vestager confirmed last year that her office was aware of potential restrictions put in place by Apple and limiting the use of the NFC chip in the iPhone, but no official probe was launched in this regard. Apple did make a series of changes to the NFC chip in the iPhone, but third-party services still can’t launch their own wallets on iOS. On the other hand, Android is a lot less restrictive in this regard, and a series of companies have already launched alternatives to Google Play, including Samsung, Huawei, and others.
Apple hasn’t commented on this new report, but given an official probe hasn’t started just yet, everyone is waiting to see if the company would be required to make more changes to the NFC chip in the iPhone to eventually allow other wallets too.