Details: U.S. Federal Judge and Epic Games Contest Whether Apple is in compliance with the order to Allow Payment Steering -
A hearing to consider the evidence of the Epic Games v. Apple trial will examine the issue of whether Apple really is complying the U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers' order that allowed developers of apps the capability to "steer" users to use other payment services outside the native App Store of the app.
The hearing regarding Apple's compliance with law was held on May 8. AP is reporting the judge Gonzalez Rogers " questioned whether Apple is putting an array of unneeded restrictions in place to prevent users from using other payment methods in iPhone applications" in spite of a court's direction.
Hearing Focused on Whether Apple Policy is Still Anti-Steering
The AP report also states that Judge Gonzalez Rogers' tone suggested Apple's implementation has primarily concentrated on protecting Apple's profits rather than ensuring that the implementation is consistent with her order to allow control, and increase iPhone users in their ability to quickly switch to different available payment methods in the application. The article points out that, according to Epic reports, Apple is still blocking developers from steering consumers to other payment options with lower cost options.
The AP article continues by stating that during the proceedings, one of the witnesses, Apple director of the iPhone App Store, Matthew Fischer, disclosed that Apple had only accepted and approved applications for 38 apps that show links to other payment systems, "a fraction of the approximately 2 million iPhone apps available in the U.S."
PC Mag points out that this small number of applications 38 out of 65,000 developers of apps that offer in-app purchases is due to costs since the 27 percent Apple charge plus the expense of credit card fees would likely result in an overall higher cost for developers.
HTML0 Apple Executive 'Unaware' of the Higher Costs Issue
A LAW360 report that appeared on May 10, 2015, details the day's events in which Epic lawyer Yonatan Even as well as Judge Gonzalez Rogers questioned Apple Finance Vice President Alex Roman. Even suggested the lower price of 3% is provided by Apple and is 27% for transactions that take through an application which is not on Apple devices as compared to the usual 30percent fee in addition to Epic has provided evidence to show that the average cost for processing payments across the U.S. is 3.5% as well as a yoga-related CEO who testified that they pay 3.5 percent to 6.5 per cent fees for payments processing. Following that, Roman said he was unaware of this reality. Even stressed that the intention was to establish an amount that allowed companies to give consumers a low cost. Roman also asked Roman to elaborate on what he thought he knew about the significance of that. The judge Gonzalez Rogers is quoted as stating to Roman that "'It sounds like you all were prone to making choices without any data or information and without any information,' she commented. It sounds like the intention was to preserve ... the money you earned in the past.'" Access the LAW360 article here.
I'm pleased to that Judge Side with Epic
The CEO David Nachman states that "We're thrilled to see the judge agree with Epic in this case We're hopeful that the tribunal will be able to oblige Apple to let steering be allowed for game and application developers with no fees and without limits. The goal is to make it easier for global commerce for software and digital product firms, and we're joining our clients to rejoice in the development towards free commerce on mobile."
Additional Antitrust Affidavit to Apple launched by US Justice Department
In addition to having been associated with being involved in Epic Games case, the U.S. Justice Department launched an antitrust lawsuit against Apple in the month of March 2024 in which it claimed that Apple is the sole dominant company of the smartphones market, which includes (among other things) in the area of electronic payments.
To find out more about HTML0 go here:
HTML0News about the field and the opinion of
More About
This post was posted on here