Slick new gadgets are usually the stars of Apple's splashy events. But on Monday, Apple will put subscriptions and services in the spotlight.
A star-studded new TV service is expected to headline Apple's event at the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino, California. Apple will likely unveil a news-subscription service built into a reimagined Apple News, as well as one bundle to rule them all, tying them all together with Apple Music. Plus it's always possible for the show to wrap up with "one more thing."
In other words, Apple is taking on a new field of rivals — just as two of Apple's existing competitors are crying foul.
In the last two weeks, Spotify and Kaspersky Lab have filed complaints with regulators alleging Apple stifles services that directly compete with its own. The two companies, a streaming music giant and a cybersecurity mainstay, made similar claims of Apple abusing the marketplace power of the App Store to strangle rivals' features, promotions or pricing.
(Apple rejected Spotify's claims and hasn't commented on Kaspersky's. Apple declined to comment for this article.)
These kinds of disputes over antitrust concerns seem wonky and far-removed, but they could affect apps and services you use everyday. They could trigger changes to how easily you can buy services from Apple rivals and how much you pay for them. And with Apple about to widen the kinds of services already offered by companies on its platforms, more of your favorite apps could be sucked in.
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Apple's dominance hasn't gone unnoticed. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democratic presidential nominee, has called for the breakup of tech titans including Google, Facebook and, yes, Apple.
"What we're really facing here is an existential crisis of…a new economy," said Rivka Gewirtz Little, an analyst for payment strategies for IDC. "We are living in a marketplace economy where innovation is unending, but we still haven't answered the questions of monetizing it with fairness."
Another powerful regulator has shown she's also listening to gripes against Apple.
Margrethe Vestager is the EU's competition commissioner, but you may know her from the billions of euros in fines the EU has slapped against Google. A day after Spotify filed its complaint against Apple to her office, Vestager tweeted about the "strong message" Spotify's chief was sending.
Even though these complaints are being filed in Europe or Russia, action against Apple could affect customers around the world.
Would Apple "want to have two different systems in different jurisdictions? That's just not how the internet economy is being set up,"said Barbara Sicalides, an antitrust lawyer at the firm Pepper Hamilton.
Team of rivals
Apple and Spotify are the world's two most dominant forces in streaming music. With 96 million paying customers, Spotify is the world's biggest. Apple Music, with more than 50 million subscribers, is next.
But Apple's expected services Monday could bring it into more direct competition with a flock of other services you use.
Netflix, Hulu and other subscription video services will be in Apple's competitive crosshairs as it releases its $1 billion-plus slate of original shows from the likes of J.J. Abrams, Brie Larson, Oprah Winfrey and Reese Witherspoon. Offering add-on video subscriptions would bring Apple head-to-head with Amazon Prime Video and its Channels model — even bumping against traditional partners like wireless company AT&T, which offers a VRV bundle of niche genre streaming services.
And Apple's news service, which is expected to offer a single subscription that unlocks access a range of magazines and newspapers, would mean Apple vies for membership dollars against any subscription-based publisher that doesn't participate in Apple's bundle.
Don't expect to read the New York Times there, for one: The newspaper's CEO said he was "leery" of the concept.
One of his misgivings — not wanting to give up part of the Times' $15-a-month digital subscription — feeds into one of Spotify's main accusations of how Apple stacks the deck against competitors: the App Store's 30 percent fee.
Apple's bite
It's something lots of services gripe about. For any digital good or service sold in an iOS app, Apple takes a 30 percent cut. That means anytime Spotify signed up a new $10-a-month Premium member inside its iPhone app, Apple took $3. That fee dropped to 15 percent once a subscription lasts longer than a year.
Spotify claims that because Apple Music doesn't face the same tax, Apple has an unfair pricing advantage: Spotify has to choose between charging iPhone customers $3 more or live with earning 30 percent less than its biggest competitor for every iOS member.
Google's Android mobile system has a powerful marketplace too, Google Play, and it also extracts similar fees. But services can release apps for Android outside Google's marketplace — known as sideloading — more readily than for Apple. It's why the insanely popular game Fortnite is available in the App Store but not Google Play. Tim Sweeney, the CEO of Fortnite's parent company, Epic, has called Apple's charges a "parasitic loss."
cnet
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