Things are far from settled for Apple in the Netherlands. You may remember the report from the start of the year that had Dutch regulators saying that Apple would be required to let dating apps in the Netherlands employ payment methods besides Apple’s own in-app payment system. Halfway through the month, Apple said it would comply, though it also planned to appeal the decision. Last week, the Netherlands’ Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) said it would assess whether Apple’s compliance met the requirements that ACM had imposed. It seems they’ve decided it did not. A piece from TechCrunch says:
The Netherlands’ competition authority has fined Apple €5 million (~$5.6 million) for failing to comply with conditions in an order requiring it to allow local dating apps to make [use] of third-party payment technology in their apps.
The biggest problem seems to be that Apple has only proposed solutions and not actually implemented them. The ACM was looking for the third-party payment process to be live by the middle of January, not just for Apple to have a plan.
For what it’s worth, TechCrunch says the ACM’s fines are capped at “a maximum of €50 million in relation to this particular order.” Apple 3.0 had Loup Ventures principal Gene Munster figuring it would take Apple about 30-minutes to make this week’s fine of €5 million, which I guess means five hours for the full €50 million? While TechCrunch also notes how affordable even the full €50 million would be, that’s not Apple’s biggest worry. The piece says the bigger concern is the globe-spanning number of competition complaints against the App Store, including in the EU, the U.K., Asia, the U.S. “In the short term,” says TechCrunch:
…and/or failing a substantial, global competition reform offer by Apple that would make App Store competition complaints go away — a regulatory patchwork looms for iOS app developers as each market/region’s regulators turn their attention to assessing Apple’s small print.
