Italy’s competition authority has imposed a €98 million fine on Apple, Apple Distribution International, and Apple Italia for exploiting its “position of absolute dominance” through the App Store. Regulators accused the tech giant of unfairly burdening app developers with its App Tracking Transparency (ATT) rules, highlighting growing European scrutiny of the feature and its impact on competition in mobile advertising.
The Italian Antitrust Authority concluded that Apple abused its dominant position in the iOS app distribution market by requiring developers to request duplicate user consent for advertising data. According to the regulators, this practice went beyond what privacy laws demand, undermining ad-based business models while offering limited additional privacy benefits for users.
“This duplication results in a lack of proportionality in the ATT policy rules, given that Apple should have guaranteed the same level of user privacy by providing developers with the option of obtaining consent for profiling in a single step,” the authority said.
The investigation was conducted in collaboration with the European Commission and Italy’s data protection regulator, the Garante per la Protezione dei Dati Personali, and assessed how Apple’s ATT framework affects competition. App Tracking Transparency, introduced in 2021, requires apps distributed via the App Store to ask users for explicit permission through a standardised pop-up before tracking activity across other apps and websites. Developers who do not obtain consent lose access to data used for targeted advertising, a critical revenue source for many app-based businesses.
The Italian ruling follows a similar move by French regulators earlier this year. In March, France’s competition authority fined Apple €150 million, concluding that the implementation of ATT placed an undue burden on app developers without being strictly necessary to safeguard user privacy.
European competition authorities have repeatedly raised concerns that ATT, unilaterally imposed by Apple, creates an uneven playing field. While third-party developers and advertising intermediaries face restrictions and potential revenue losses, Apple continues to benefit from its own advertising operations within the iOS ecosystem.
Analysts say the fines signal increasing regulatory pressure on the world’s largest technology companies over how privacy measures intersect with market dominance. Apple has yet to publicly comment on the Italian decision, and the company may appeal, as it has in previous European cases involving App Store policies.
The fine adds to growing European scrutiny of Apple’s App Tracking Transparency feature and its impact on competition in mobile advertising, reflecting the broader push by EU regulators to ensure that dominant tech platforms cannot use privacy rules as a means to stifle rivals. With similar investigations ongoing in several European countries, Apple may face additional penalties if authorities find further evidence of anticompetitive practices linked to its App Store ecosystem.
