Apple Fined 813 Billion Won, Meta 325 Billion Won
Ordered to Rectify Violations Within 60 Days
U.S. Big Tech giants Apple and Meta have been fined a combined total of over 1 trillion won for violating the Digital Markets Act (DMA), commonly referred to as the "anti-bullying law," in the European Union (EU) market.
On April 23 (local time), the European Commission announced the results of its DMA violation investigation and decided to impose fines of 500 million euros (approximately 813.3 billion won) on Apple and 200 million euros (approximately 325.2 billion won) on Meta.
The Commission also ordered both companies to rectify the violations identified in the investigation within 60 days. Failure to comply will result in additional enforcement penalties. The Commission determined that Apple's internal rule prohibiting "external payment inducement" violated the DMA.
According to the DMA, any application (app) developer who offers a cheaper app purchase option outside the Apple App Store must be allowed to inform customers and provide a way to redirect them to other external payment sites from the App Store. However, Apple blocked this practice.
Regarding Meta, the Commission took issue with the "pay or consent to data collection" model introduced in November 2023. The Commission found that this model effectively forced Facebook and Instagram users who did not pay for the service to consent to data collection for advertising purposes, thereby violating the DMA.
This decision to impose fines on Apple and Meta marks the first sanctions since the full implementation of the DMA in March last year. The DMA, known as the "Big Tech anti-bullying law," is designed to prevent abuse of market dominance by major platform operators. It designates seven platform companies, including Apple and Meta, as "gatekeepers" and subjects them to special regulations. Five out of these seven companies are headquartered in the United States.
In the event of a violation, fines can be imposed of up to 10% of a company's global annual turnover. If repeated violations are determined, the maximum fine can increase to 20%.
However, the fines imposed on Apple and Meta on this occasion amount to about 0.1% of each company's annual revenue. This is significantly below the DMA's maximum fine limit of 10% of annual revenue. The Commission explained, "Since the DMA is a newly enacted law and the duration of the violations by both companies was not long, these factors were taken into account when calculating the fines."
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