U.S. Rep. David Cicilline strikes again. The politician is in fact at the helm of a new bill aimed simply at prohibiting Apple from automatically downloading its proprietary apps on the mobiles it sells to the general public. At least if they have reliable alternatives on the App Store, which is the case for… all of them.
So where some may criticize Safari's lack of features, Mozilla Firefox offers a similar experience for free. There are also more powerful file explorers, Microsoft Word to compete with Pages or even Spotify and Soundcloud instead of the Apple Music platform. And it turns out thatsome of these applications are already in conflict with Cupertino on this subject…
Redmond in the loop?
According toBloomberg, the Democrat did not directly specify whether Microsoft would also be concerned. However, he took the opportunity to remind us that it will be up to the Department of Justice (equivalent to our eponymous ministry across the Atlantic) and the Federal Trade Commission to decide. Let us also recall thatthis is far from being the first investigation that the FTC will have to carry out on Apple.
On Windows, the situation is quite similar given that Internet Explorer had already been singled out for a fairly similar anti-competitive positioning. Remember: it was then required that its editor display a message for the user to choose their default browser.An option that we now even find on… iPhone, years later and by popular demand.
Few consequences on the consumer side
If iOS were to be delivered without Apple apps, the big loser would obviously be its developer. Indeed, if it is often singled out, it is precisely to take advantage of Internet users looking no further than Mail, Photos or Maps for their content. They are then at the mercy of the manufacturer's data collection, which continues to generate revenue by tracking them even after the device has been purchased.
On the contrary, if a scenario similar to the ban on Google services at Huawei occurred, then more creators would have the chance of gaining market share. It is even very likely, since independents are often less stingy with options given that they are most of the time focused on a single value proposition.
i-nfo.fr - Official iPhon.fr app
By : Keleops AG
