Apple is one of the most influential technology corporations in the world, which in 2025 retained the status of one of the most valuable brands in the world with a valuation reaching hundreds of billions of dollars. This dominance is particularly visible in the premium segment and on the American market. However, the scale of the influence of the Cupertino giant means that in 2025 the company will remain under strict supervision of antitrust authorities in Europe.
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Penalty for Apple from Italy
“Italy fines Apple €98 million over its App Store tracking policy” Euronews reports on Monday.
Indicates that this is the next installment of the series in which it takes place in Europe Scrutiny of Apple's App Tracking Transparency is growing and its impact on competition in the mobile advertising market.
See also: UOKiK versus Apple. The Polish office initiated antitrust proceedings
In the justification of the Italian office we read that the penalty is in favour taking advantage of an “absolutely dominant position” via the App Store, accusing the company of unfairly charging app developers.
The authority found that Apple forced developers to obtain user consent twice to share advertising data – which went beyond the requirements of privacy law – thereby undermining advertising-based business models and failing to deliver proportionate privacy benefits.
As the antitrust office states, such duplication “leads to a lack of proportionality in the principles of ATT's policy, given that Apple should guarantee the same level of user privacy by ensuring that software developers can obtain consent to profiling in one step.”
Apple in the crosshairs of European regulators
This ruling follows a lengthy investigation carried out in cooperation with the European Commission and the Italian data protection authority.
Scrutiny of this policy has intensified across Europe: in March, the French competition authority fined Apple €150 million.
See also: Apple “sitting on a park bench, drinking lemonade.” Will it share the fate of BlackBerry?
Apple's 2021 App Tracking Transparency policy requires apps distributed through the App Store to ask for explicit user consent through a standard pop-up window before tracking activity across other apps and websites.
If consent is refused, software developers lose access to data commonly used in targeted advertising.
