This year, Apple was the target of several monopoly charges at different ends of its business, such as in the streaming of music (Apple Music) and applications (App Store). Regarding the latter, Apple published a page responding to the accusations of different agencies and companies, but that was not enough for it to stop being investigated for some of its actions.
The company is in the spotlight of Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) after a complaint from the security company Kaspersky Lab, which accused Apple of abusing its position as owner of the App Store in order to benefit from its own resources (some offered natively by iOS) at the expense of third-party software.
The Russian agency is investigating why Kaspersky’s Safe Kids app was removed from the App Store and why Apple asked the developer to make changes to the software’s operation so that it could be distributed again on the Apple platform. .
At the time, Apple reported that it removed the app because it did not meet App Store guidelines, but Kaspersky argued that the app had been out for three years and was only withdrawn because the company had just released iOS 12 with the its own monitoring feature, Usage Time (Screen Time), which offers similar parental control functions in the Safe Kids app.
When asked about the investigation in Russia, Apple referred to the Reuters his position issued last April, in which the company claimed to have removed several parental control applications from the App Store because they «jeopardized users’ privacy and security».
