The European Commission, the European Union’s executive arm, on Monday hit Apple with a 1.8 billion euro ($1.95 billion) antitrust fine for abusing its dominant position on the market for the distribution of music streaming apps.
The commission said it found that Apple had applied restrictions on app developers that prevented them from informing iOS users about alternative and cheaper music subscription services available outside of the app.
Apple also banned developers of music streaming apps from providing any instructions about how users could subscribe to these cheaper offers, the commission alleged.
This is Apple’s first antitrust fine from Brussels and is one of the biggest dished out to a technology company by the EU.
Apple shares were down around 2.5% in morning trading in the U.S.
The European Commission opened an investigation into Apple after a complaint from Spotify in 2019. The probe was narrowed down to focus on contractual restrictions that Apple imposed on app developers which prevent them from informing iPhone and iPad users of alternative music subscription services at lower prices outside of the App Store.
Apple’s conduct lasted almost 10 years, according to the commission, and “may have led many iOS users to pay significantly higher prices for music streaming subscriptions because of the high commission fee imposed by Apple on developers and passed on to consumers in the form of higher subscription prices for the same service on the Apple App Store.”
Apple response
In a fiery response to the fine, Apple said Spotify would stand to gain the most from the EU pronouncement.
“The primary advocate for this decision — and the biggest beneficiary — is Spotify, a company based in Stockholm, Sweden. Spotify has the largest music streaming app in the world, and has met with the European Commission more than 65 times during this investigation,” Apple said in a statement.
“Today, Spotify has a 56 percent share of Europe’s music streaming market — more than double their closest competitor’s — and pays Apple nothing for the services that have helped make them one of the most recognisable brands in the world.”
Apple said that a “large part” of Spotify’s success is thanks to the Cupertino, California-based giant’s App Store, “along with all the tools and technology that Spotify uses to build, update, and share their app with Apple users around the world.”
Apple said that Spotify pays it nothing. That’s because instead of selling subscriptions in their iOS app, Spotify sell them via their own website stead. Apple does not collect a commission on those purchases.
Developers over the years have spoken out against the 30% fee Apple charges on in-app purchases.
Spotify in a statement called the commission’s decision “an important moment in the fight for a more open internet for consumers.”
“Apple’s rules muzzled Spotify and other music streaming services from sharing with our users directly in our app about various benefits—denying us the ability to communicate with them about how to upgrade and the price of subscriptions, promotions, discounts, or numerous other perks,” Spotify said.
“Of course, Apple Music, a competitor to these apps, is not barred from the same behaviour.”
Apple fine just a ‘parking ticket’
The commission said Apple prevented developers of music streaming apps from informing their iOS users within their apps about prices of subscriptions or offers available elsewhere.
App developers could not include links in their apps leading iOS users to the app developers’ websites where alternative subscription could be bought, the commission alleges.
The EU’s executive arm also said Apple prevented app developers from contacting their own newly acquired users — for example via email — to inform them about alternative pricing options.
In a press briefing, EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager qualified the basic amount of the fine for Apple, excluding the 1.8 billion euro lump sum, as “quite small” and likened it to a “speeding ticket, or a parking ticket” relative to the company’s scale.
“When Apple imposes these anti-steering provisions on the music provider, they as developers have no other choice than to either accept them or abandon the App store. Apple with its App Store currently holds a monopoly,” Vestager said.
She added the commission has ordered Apple to remove the so-called anti-steering provisions and to “refrain from similar practices in the future.”
EU scrutiny on tech giants rises
The fine will ramp up tensions between Big Tech and Brussels at a time when the EU is increasing scrutiny of these firms.
Last year, the commission designated Apple among other tech firms like Microsoft and Meta as “gatekeepers” under a landmark regulation called the Digital Markets Act, which broadly came into effect last year.
The term gatekeepers refers to massive internet platforms which the EU believes are restricting access to core platform services, such as online search, advertising, and messaging and communications.
The Digital Markets Act aims to clamp down on anti-competitive practices from tech players, and force them to open out some of their services to other competitors. Smaller internet firms and other businesses have complained about being hurt by these companies’ business practices.
These laws have already had an impact on Apple. The company announced plans this year to open up its iPhone and iPad to alternative app stores other than its own. Developers have long complained about the 30% fee Apple charges on in-app purchases.
Vestager fired a warning shot to Apple in regard to the DMA.
“In a couple of days on the 7th of March, Apple will have to comply with the full list of dos and don’ts under the DMA. Among others, Apple can no longer impose rules such as the anti-steering obligations … and this holds for any app on the App Store, not just music streaming apps.”
— CNBC’s Ryan Browne and Ruxandra Iordache contributed to this article.
The Nasdaq MarketSite in New York, June 9, 2023.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Silicon Valley executives and financiers publicly opened their wallets in support of President Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential run. The early returns in 2025 aren’t great, to say the least.
Following Trump’s sweeping tariff plan announced Wednesday, the Nasdaq suffered steep consecutive daily drops to finish 10% lower for the week, the index’s worst performance since the beginning of the Covid pandemic in 2020.
The tech industry’s leading CEO’s rushed to contribute to Trump’s inauguration in January and paraded to Washington, D.C., for the event. Since then, it’s been a slog.
The market can always turn around, but economists and investors aren’t optimistic, and concerns are building of a potential recession. The seven most valuable U.S. tech companies lost a combined $1.8 trillion in market cap in two days.
Apple slid 14% for the week, its biggest drop in more than five years. Tesla, led by top Trump adviser Elon Musk, plunged 9.2% and is now down more than 40% for the year. Musk contributed close to $300 million to help propel Trump back to the White House.
Nvidia, Meta and Amazon all suffered double-digit drops for the week. For Amazon, a ninth straight weekly decline marks its longest such losing streak since 2008.
With Wall Street selling out of risky assets on concern that widespread tariff hikes will punish the U.S. and global economy, the fallout has drifted down to the IPO market. Online lender Klarna and ticketing marketplace StubHub delayed their IPOs due to market turbulence, just weeks after filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and fintech company Chime is also reportedly delaying its listing.
CoreWeave, a provider of artificial intelligence infrastructure, last week became the first venture-backed company to raise more than $1 billion in a U.S. IPO since 2021. But the company slashed its offering, and trading has been very volatile in its opening days on the market. The stock plunged 12% on Friday, leaving it 17% above its offer price but below the bottom of its initial range.
“You couldn’t create a worse market and macro environment to go public,” said Phil Haslett, co-founder of EquityZen, a platform for investing in private companies. “Way too much turbulence. All flights are grounded until further notice.”
CoreWeave investor Mark Klein of SuRo Capital previously told CNBC that the company could be the first in an “IPO parade.” Now he’s backtracking.
“It appears that the IPO parade has been temporarily halted,” Klein told CNBC by email on Friday. “The current tariff situation has prompted these companies to pause and assess its impact.”
‘Cave rapidly’
During last year’s presidential campaign, prominent venture capitalists like Marc Andreessen backed Trump, expecting that his administration would usher in a boom and eliminate some of the hurdles to startup growth set up by the Biden administration. Andreessen and his partner, Ben Horowitz, said in July that their financial support of the Trump campaign was due to what they called a better “little tech agenda.”
A spokesperson for Andreessen Horowitz declined to comment.
Some techies who supported Trump in the campaign have taken to social media to defend their positions.
Venture capitalist Keith Rabois, a managing director at Khosla Ventures, posted on X on Thursday that “Trump Derangement Syndrome has morphed into Tariff Derangement Syndrome.” He said tariffs aren’t inflationary, are effective at reducing fentanyl imports, and he expects that “most other countries will cave and cave rapidly.”
That was before China’s Finance Ministry said on Friday that it will impose a 34% tariff on all goods imported from the U.S. starting on April 10.
At Sequoia Capital, which is the biggest investor in Klarna, outspoken Trump supporter Shaun Maguire, wrote on X, “The first long-term thinking President of my lifetime,” and said in a separate post that, “The price of stocks says almost nothing about the long term health of an economy.”
However, Allianz Chief Economic Advisor Mohamed El-Erian warned on Friday that Trump’s extensive raft of import tariffs are putting the U.S. economy at risk of recession.
“You’ve had a major repricing of growth prospects, with a recession in the U.S. going up to 50% probability, you’ve seen an increase in inflation expectations, up to 3.5%,” he told CNBC’s Silvia Amaro on the sidelines of the Ambrosetti Forum in Cernobbio, Italy.
Former Microsoft CEOs Bill Gates, left, and Steve Ballmer, center, pose for photos with CEO Satya Nadella during an event celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Microsoft on April 4, 2025 in Redmond, Washington.
Stephen Brashear | Getty Images
Meanwhile, executives at tech’s megacap companies were largely silent this week, and their public relations representatives declined to provide comments about their thinking.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was in the awkward position on Friday of celebrating his company’s 50th anniversary at corporate headquarters in Redmond, Washington. Alongside Microsoft’s prior two CEOs, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, Nadella sat down with CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin for a televised interview that was planned well before Trump’s tariff announcement.
When asked about the tariffs at the top of the interview, Nadella effectively dodged the question and avoided expressing his views about whether the new policies will hamper Microsoft’s business.
Ballmer, who was succeeded by Nadella in 2014, acknowledged to Sorkin that “disruption is very hard on people” and that, “as a Microsoft shareholder, this kind of thing is not good.” Ballmer and Gates are two of the 12 wealthiest people in the world thanks to their Microsoft fortunes.
C-suites may not be able to stay quiet for long, especially if the recent turmoil spills into next week.
Lise Buyer, who previously helped guide Google through its IPO and now works as an adviser to companies going public, said there’s no appetite for risk in the market under these conditions. But there is risk that staffers get jittery, and they’ll surely look to their leaders for some reassurance.
“Until markets settle out and we have the opportunity to access valuation levels, public company CEOs should work to calm potentially distressed employees,” Buyer said in an email. “And private company managements should refine plans to get by on dollars already in the treasury.”
— CNBC’s Hayden Field, Jordan Novet, Leslie Picker, Annie Palmer and Samantha Subin contributed to this report.
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