Under the EU’s Digital Markets Act, Apple is required to allow developers to freely inform customers of alternative offers outside its App Store.
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The European Union on Wednesday fined Apple and Meta hundreds of millions of euros each for breaching the bloc’s digital competition laws.
The European Commission, which is the executive body of the EU, said it was fining Apple 500 million euros ($571 million) and Meta 200 million euros ($228.4 million) for breaches of the Digital Markets Act (DMA).
Officials said that Apple failed to comply with so-called “anti-steering” obligations under the DMA. Under the EU’s tech law, Apple is required to allow developers to freely inform customers of alternative offers outside its App Store.
The tech giant was ordered by the EU to remove technical and commercial restrictions on steering and to refrain from perpetuating its non-compliant conduct in the future.
Apple said in a statement that it planned to appeal the EU fine while continuing its discussions with the Commission.
“Today’s announcements are yet another example of the European Commission unfairly targeting Apple in a series of decisions that are bad for the privacy and security of our users, bad for products, and force us to give away our technology for free,” Apple said.
“We have spent hundreds of thousands of engineering hours and made dozens of changes to comply with this law, none of which our users have asked for. Despite countless meetings, the Commission continues to move the goal posts every step of the way,” the company added.
For Meta, the EU Commission found that the social media group illegally required users to consent to sharing their data with the company or pay for an ad-free service. This was in response to Meta’s introduction of a paid subscription tier for Facebook and Instagram in November 2023.
Joel Kaplan, Meta’s chief global affairs officer, said in a statement that the Commission was “attempting to handicap successful American businesses while allowing Chinese and European companies to operate under different standards.”
“This isn’t just about a fine; the Commission forcing us to change our business model effectively imposes a multi-billion-dollar tariff on Meta while requiring us to offer an inferior service. And by unfairly restricting personalized advertising the European Commission is also hurting European businesses and economies,” Kaplan said.
The EU said its fine for Meta took into account steps that the tech giant took to comply with its rules through a new version of its free personalized ads service that uses less personal data to display advertisement.
“The Commission is currently assessing this new option and continues its dialogue with Meta, requesting the company to provide evidence of the impact that this new ads model has in practice,” regulators said.
Meta was sent a cease-and-desist order by the EU ordering it to make changes to its less personalized ads option over the coming 60 days or face further fines, according to a source familiar with the matter, who asked to remain anonymous as the information is not public.
The antitrust decision risks potential retaliation from U.S. President Donald Trump, who has made no secret of his displeasure with the EU’s regulatory enforcement actions on America’s digital giants.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration imposed so-called “reciprocal” tariffs of 20% on EU goods entering the U.S. He later dropped the new tariff rates on dozens of trading partners — including the EU — to 10% for a limited time period for trade negotiations.
The reciprocal tariffs came after Trump earlier issued a directive threatening to impose tariffs on Europe to combat what he called “overseas extortion” of American tech companies through digital services taxes, fines, practices and policies.
The Huawei flagship store and the Apple flagship store at Nanjing Road Pedestrian Street in Shanghai, China, Sept. 2, 2024.
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Huawei reclaimed the top spot in China’s smartphone market in the second quarter of the year, while Apple returned to growth in the country — one of its most critical markets — data released by technology market analyst firm Canalys showed on Monday.
Huawei shipped 12.2 million smartphones in China in the three months ended June, a rise of 15% year on year — equating to 18% market share. It’s the first time Huawei has been the biggest player by market share in China since the first quarter of 2024, according to Canalys.
Apple, meanwhile, shipped 10.1 million smartphones in the quarter in China, up 4% year on year and ranking fifth. It is the first time Apple has recorded growth in China since the fourth quarter of 2023, Canalys said.
Shipments represent the number of devices sent to retailers. They do no equate directly to sales but are a gauge of demand.
The numbers come ahead of Apple’s quarterly earnings release this week, with investors watching the company’s performance in China, a market where the Cupertino giant has faced significant challenges, including intense competition from Huawei and other local players such as Xiaomi.
Huawei, which made a comeback at the end of 2023 after its smartphone business was crippled by U.S. sanctions, has eaten away at Apple’s share.
Apple’s return to growth in China will be a welcome sign for investors. The U.S. tech giant “strategically adjusted its pricing” for the iPhone 16 series in China, which helped it grow, Canalys said. Chinese e-commerce firms discounted Apple’s iPhone 16 models during the quarter. And Apple itself also increased trade-in prices for some iPhone models.
Meanwhile, competition in China has intensified. Huawei has aggressively launched various smartphones in the past year and has started to roll out HarmonyOS 5, its self-developed operating system, across various devices. It is a rival to Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS.
“This move is expected to accelerate the expansion of its independent ecosystem’s user base, while also placing greater demands on system compatibility and user experience,” Lucas Zhong, analyst at Canalys, said in a press release.
Alibaba announced plans to release a pair of smart glasses powered by its AI models. The Quark AI Glasses are Alibaba’s first foray into the smart glasses product category.
Alibaba
Alibaba on Monday unveiled a pair of smart glasses powered by its artificial intelligence models, marking the Chinese firm’s first foray into the product category.
The e-commerce giant said the Quark AI Glasses will be launched in China by the end of 2025 with hardware powered by the firm’s Qwen large language model and its advanced AI assistant called Quark.
The Hangzhou, headquartered company is one of the leaders in China’s AI space, aggressively launching new models with capabilities that compete with Western counterparts like OpenAI.
Many tech companies see wearables, specifically glasses, as the next frontier in computing alongside the smartphone. Quark, which was updated this year, is currently available as an app in China. Alibaba is stepping into the hardware game as a way to distribute the app more widely.
The Quark AI Glasses are Alibaba’s answer to Meta’s smart glasses that were designed in collaboration with Ray-Ban. The Chinese tech giant will also now compete with Chinese consumer electronics player Xiaomi who this year released its own AI glasses.
Alibaba said its glasses will support hands-free calling, music streaming, real-time language translation, and meeting transcription. The glasses also feature a built-in camera.
Alibaba owns a range of different services in China from mapping to an online travel agent. Its affiliate company Ant Group also runs the widely-used Alipay mobile service. Alibaba said users will be able to use a navigation service via the glasses, pay with Alipay and compare prices on Taobao, its China e-commerce platform.
The firm has yet to release other details such as the price and technical specifications.
A Samsung flag flies outside the company office in Seoul, South Korea on February 05, 2024.
Chung Sung-jun | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Samsung Electronics has entered into a $16.5 billion contract for supplying semiconductors to a major company, a regulatory filing by the South Korean company showed Monday.
The memory chipmaker, which did not name the counterparty, mentioned in its filing that the effective start date of the contract was July 26, 2024 — receipt of orders — and its end date was Dec. 31, 2033.
Samsung declined to comment on details regarding the counterparty.
The company said that details of the deal, including the name of the counterparty, will not be disclosed until the end of 2033, citing a request from the second party “to protect trade secrets,” according to a Google translation of the filing in Korean.
“Since the main contents of the contract have been not been disclosed due to the need to maintain business confidentiality, investors are advised to invest carefully considering the possibility of changes or termination of the contract,” the company said. Its shares were up nearly 3% in early trading.
Local South Korean media outlets have said that American chip firm Qualcomm could potentially place an order for Samsung’s 2 nanometer chips.
While Qualcomm is a possibility, given its potential 2 nanometer project with Samsung, Tesla seems the more probable customer, Ray Wang, research director of semiconductors, supply chain and emerging technology at The Futurum Group, told CNBC
Samsung’s foundry service manufactures chips based on designs provided by other companies. It is the second largest provider of foundry services globally, behind Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.
The company said in April that it was aiming for its foundry business to start mass production of its next-generation 2 nanometer and secure major orders for the advanced product. In semiconductor technology, smaller nanometer sizes signify more compact transistor designs, which lead to greater processing power and efficiency.
Samsung, which is set to deliver earnings on Thursday, expects its second-quarter profit to more than halve. An analyst previously told CNBC that the disappointing forecast was due to weak orders for its foundry business and as the company has struggled to capture AI demand for its memory business.
The company has fallen behind competitors SK Hynix and Micron in high-bandwidth memory chips — an advanced type of memory used in AI chipsets.
SK Hynix, the leader in HBM, has become the main supplier of these chips to American AI behemoth Nvidia. While Samsung has reportedly been working to get the latest version of its HBM chips certified by Nvidia, a report from a local outlet suggests these plans have been pushed back to at least September.