Apple hit with $162m fine over ATT in France

France’s antitrust regulator has hit Apple with a €150 million ($162.3m) fine over the tech giant’s implementation of App Tracking Transparency.

The Autorité de la concurrence stated that ATT was “abusing” its dominant position in the mobile apps sector on iOS and iPadOS between April 2021 and July 2023 in a way that was “neither necessary for nor proportionate with Apple’s stated objective of protecting personal data”.

Notably, the authority highlighted that it doesn’t deem the objective of Apple’s controversial privacy policy problematic “at its core”, but rather the problem lies in how it has been implemented.

The privacy tool has not been banned in France, therefore. Instead, Apple has been ordered to pay the fine and publish the summary of the Autorité’s decision on its website for seven consecutive days.

Confirmation of the fine follows one month after rumours emerged that the first regulatory veto against the ATT would be made this spring.

“Definite economic harm”

An antitrust procedure was initially triggered in 2023 in France over concerns that Apple’s ATT made it more difficult and expensive for other companies to advertise on Apple devices, meanwhile Apple could abuse its dominant position.

The regulator has ultimately found this to be true, with ATT “causing definite economic harm to application publishers and advertising service providers”.

Small publishers in particular were penalised by the privacy policy, being dependent in large part on third-party data collection, quashed by the multiple consent pop-ups presented to end users. The regulator found that this made the iOS environment “excessively complex”.

“The Autorité found an asymmetry in how Apple treated itself and how publishers were treated,” the regulator stated.

“While publishers were required to obtain double consent from users for tracking on third-party sites and applications, Apple did not ask for consent from users of its own applications (until the implementation of iOS 15). Due to this asymmetry, the CNIL fined Apple for infringing Article 82 of the French Data Protection Act, which transposes the ePrivacy Directive.

“The asymmetry remains today insofar as Apple has introduced a single ‘Personalised Advertising’ pop-up to collect user consent for its own data collection, while continuing to require double consent for third-party data collection by publishers.”

Mobile Dev Memo’s Eric Seufert believes the decision increases the likelihood that Germany’s own antitrust authority will find ATT in violation of its regulations.

“I think it’s only a matter of time until a similar, EU-wide ruling is made,” he said.