The multinational Apple defended itself today from allegations of unfair competition from Spotify by ensuring that the Swedish company only pays the so-called “app rate” on applications downloaded through its virtual store in less than 1% of its users.
The firm from Cupertino (California) responded to the lawsuit that Spotify filed in March with the European Commission (EC), accusing it of hindering competition through its control of the “App Store” (store app) and fees. that charges for making purchases through that online establishment.
According to Apple on Monday to European regulators, the streaming music platform only currently pays a rate of 15% on about 680,000 of its subscribers with “premium” accounts (less than 1% of the total of 100 million customers with which Spotify counts in this modality).
With the publication of these figures, Apple tries to remove iron to the accusations of Spotify and to the impact that its rate could be having on free competition, at the same time that it reduces the percentage of the rate, since Spotify estimated it at 30% and they place it at 15%.
This difference is explained because since 2016 Apple “only” charges 15% to those subscriptions that have been active for more than one year, compared to the 30% it charges during the first twelve months, and precisely Spotify subscriptions were only available through of the payment system of the “App Store” between 2014 and 2016.
The 680,000 Spotify users who pay for their subscription through the “App Store”, therefore, are all prior to 2016, and when they have used the product for more than twelve months, the rate applied by Apple is 15% and they do not 30%
However, if Spotify decided to offer subscriptions through Apple’s online store, the rate that would apply to these new purchases would be 30% during the first twelve months, as the lawsuit states.
In presenting the complaint to the EC in March, the CEO and founder of the Swedish company, Daniel Ek, said that Apple has introduced rules in its application store that “purposely limit the choice and stifle innovation,” acting “as player and as referee “to take advantage of other application developers.
