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

CTOnews.com, May 3 (Xinhua)-- Apple's antitrust case in the UK has once again been dismissed by the court. Although two of its App Store policies have been found to be monopolistic, British competition regulators are unable to impose sanctions on them because they missed the legal deadline. The latter is likely to appeal again, but the outcome is unclear.

The antitrust case stems from two policies of Apple's App Store. One is that Apple prohibits the provision of cloud game services on App Store, meaning that developers cannot provide an application that can play multiple games through a cloud server. This is seen as a competition for Apple to protect its revenue share of its games and reduce its own Apple Arcade subscription game service. Second, although Apple allows any developer to create their own web browser and provide it on App Store, it only approves browsers that use its own WebKit rendering engine. This makes it impossible for developers to build a browser application that is faster than Safari, and Apple limits some Safari features, such as Apple Pay integration.

In June last year, the UK's Competition and Market Authority (CMA) investigated Apple's two policies and found that they were indeed monopolistic. However, because CMA previously referred to its research as "market research (market study)" rather than "market research (market investigation)", only the latter can give it the legal power to impose sanctions, so CMA cannot take any action against Apple. To address this problem, CMA reopened a new case against the same two issues, this time labeling it as "market research".

However, Apple argues that CMA has missed the deadline to open the investigation. This is because the law requires regulators to "open" an investigation on the same day as the release of the preliminary findings. Apple believes that the word "should" has the same meaning as "must", while CMA believes that the word "should" only gives it the right to open an investigation immediately, not an obligation. Although Apple's explanation seems more reasonable, in fact, both sides have legal precedents to support their views, so CMA appealed to the Competition Court of Appeal.

Apple seemed to be in a better position at the time, and today's ruling confirmed that, according to Reuters, the competition appeals court rejected CMA's decision to open an investigation and rejected CMA's application to appeal the ruling on Wednesday. In its decision to reject the appeal, the court said the law on when CMA could open market research was clear. "the provisions of the law are important, even if they produce undesirable or unfortunate results." The court said.

However, this may not be the end of the case. CMA can still refer its case to the Supreme Court, and the regulator has yet to say whether it will do so, saying only that it is carefully considering the court's decision and what to do next.

Apple's antitrust case in the UK has attracted a lot of attention from the industry and the public because it involves the way App Store operates as one of the world's largest mobile app markets. Apple has always adhered to its App Store policy to protect the security and privacy of users and to provide a high-quality application experience. However, some developers and regulators believe that Apple uses its monopoly position in App Store to limit competition and innovation and harm consumers and developers.

CTOnews.com noted that Apple is currently facing similar antitrust charges and investigations in other countries and regions, such as the United States, the European Union, Japan and South Korea. The outcome of these cases could have a significant impact on Apple's business and reputation, and could change the landscape and rules of the mobile app market. As a result, Apple's antitrust case in the UK is far from over, and there are more variables and challenges in the future.

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