Following complaint, Apple investigated in Russia for monopoly

Apple has been the target of several monopoly charges this year at different points in its business, such as the streaming Music (Apple Music) and App (App Store). Regarding the latter, Ma published a page responding to the accusations of different agencies and companies, but that was not enough to stop it being investigated by some of its actions.

The company is under the spotlight of Russian Federal Antimonoplastic Service (FAS) following a complaint from the security company Kaspersky Lab, which accused Ma of abusing its position as owner of the App Store in order to benefit from its own features (some offered natively by iOS) to the detriment of third party software.

The Russian agency is investigating why Kaspersky's Safe Kids app has been removed from the App Store and why Apple has asked the developer to make changes to the software's operation so that it can be re-distributed on the Apple platform. .

At the time, Apple said it removed the app because it did not meet the App Store guidelines, but Kaspersky argued that the app was already being distributed three years ago and was withdrawn because the company had just released iOS 12 with its monitoring feature itself, Time of Use (Screen Time), which offers similar parental control features in the Safe Kids app.

When asked about the Russian investigation, Apple referred to Reuters its position issued last April, in which the company claimed that it removed several parental control applications from the App Store because they "endangered users' privacy and security."


Kaspersky Safe Kids Family GPS app icon