Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

According to news in the morning of September 9, Beijing time, Daniel Ike (Daniel Ek), the founder of streaming music app Spotify, recently went to Brussels, Belgium, to appeal to the European Commission to speed up the antitrust lawsuit against Apple.

In an interview, the Swedish billionaire said he had discussed what he thought was Apple's "anti-competitive behaviour" with Margrethe Vestager, the EU antitrust commissioner. "it's like a company that changes all the time, but doesn't take any action," Ike said. " He pointed out that national regulators, including Japan, the Netherlands and South Korea, had "taken quite severe measures" against Apple on similar issues, and he called on the European Commission to do the same.

"I asked her what I could do to move the case forward," Mr Ike said. as an entrepreneur, you always want things to be done yesterday, but the regulatory process does take time. So so far, I think that's normal, but that doesn't mean people shouldn't try to speed up or try to make more progress. "

Mr Ike also said he hoped his visit to the European Commission would speed up the investigation of Apple, which has been going on for four years. "I hope that [my visit] will raise awareness and attention to this agenda and give it a higher priority."

During the trip to Brussels, Ike visited Vestager, EU Commissioner Vera Jourova and Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Thierry Breton to present his views on why antitrust investigations against Apple should be pushed forward quickly.

Spotify filed a complaint with EU regulators in 2019, alleging that Apple withdrew 30 per cent of App Store's paid subscriptions and prevented Spotify from telling users about other payment methods. Earlier this year, the European Commission formally accused Apple of violating EU law.

Ike said Vestager told him that she was also frustrated by the speed of the investigation. The European Commission did not respond to the meeting, saying only that the two sides discussed "competition and digital products". The European Commission did not set a deadline for the final decision, and EU officials did not say when a final decision might be made. Whichever party loses the case is likely to appeal to all levels of EU courts.

Critics of Spotify argue that the company has been so successful that it does not need regulators to crack down on Apple to survive. But Ike disagreed, saying that Spotify, despite its success, was in a "harsh environment".

Companies dissatisfied with the tech giants have long said that regulators' antitrust investigations have yielded too few results and made too slow progress to do little to promote competition in the industry. Antitrust fines are often seen by giants as the cost of running a business.

In addition to the charges against Apple, Ike also praised the two landmark bills recently passed by the European Union, namely, the Digital Market Act and the Digital Services Act. But he believes more needs to be done to deal with a rapidly changing market.

The goal of the EU's Digital Market Act is to curb tech giants, such as big platforms, by banning monopolistic behavior. The bill defines the rules governing the Internet, including how to monitor and delete illegal content.

"We believe that the Digital Market Act and the Digital Services Act provide a very important cornerstone," Mr Ike said. our question is how these bills will really be implemented. the development of the technology industry is accelerating, how can we remedy it? in the current cases, most of the remedies we see are understated and do not necessarily attract their attention. "

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.