European Commissioner Margrethe Vestager conducted ‘very preliminary investigations’ into Apple

Margrethe Vestager, European Union’s anti-monopoly
chief, answers questions from reporters at Web Summit in
Lisbon.
Jim
Edwards

• European Commissioner for Competition Margrethe
  Vestager said, “In some of the areas where we have had very
  preliminary investigations, we find that Apple is not a
  dominant company.”
• In the past, Vestager has fined Apple €13 billion ($15
  billion) for non-payment of taxes and fined Google €7 billion
  ($8 billion) for anti-competition violations.
• Apple and its investors will thus be relieved they are
  no longer in her searchlight. 
• She is near the end of her third investigation into Google,
  she said. That probe focuses on AdSense.

LISBON — The European Commission conducted “very preliminary
investigations” into whether Apple
might be so large that it had an anti-competitive effect in
Europe, but quickly realised that the company was not “dominant”
enough in its markets to warrant further action, the European
Commissioner for Competition said Wednesday.

Margrethe Vestager, European Union’s anti-monopoly chief since
2014, was speaking at a press conference at the Web Summit
conference in Lisbon. When asked whether she was concerned
that Apple might be using apps like iMessage to lock other apps
out of the messaging market, she replied that Apple simply wasn’t
big enough to warrant regulatory action.

“We haven’t looked specifically into messengers,” she said.

“In some of the areas where we have had very preliminary
investigations, we find that Apple is not a dominant company,”
she said. “It’s a big company, but it does not hold a dominance
as Google does in some of its markets, and that would be the
background of that.”

Vestager
has previously ordered a €13 billion ($15 billion) fine
against Apple for its use of Irish tax laws to reduce its
corporate tax. That was the biggest fine in tax history. She has
also ordered fines of €2.7 billion and €4.3 billion against
Google
for
abusing its dominance of search to favour its own comparison
shopping services, and for requiring phone manufacturers who
use the Android operating system to also use Google’s
apps and to exclude competing apps.

Read more:

The White House is considering an antitrust investigation into
‘online platform bias’ at Google and Facebook — read the leaked
document here.

She also drew a comparison between Google and Apple based on
their size, and the effect of that size on competition.

“Google in the legal term of dominance is a dominant company
because they are dominant in search,” she said. “The bigger you
get the more responsibility you get. So if you are a
dominant company, you also have a special responsibility because
competition is weakened in the market that you’re in. This is why
we have the Google case. This is the legal basis of the Google
case. And if a company is not dominant it can do all the things
that a dominant company can do, and in some of the areas where we
have had very preliminary investigations, we find that Apple is
not a dominant company. It’s a big company but it does not hold a
dominance as Google does in some of its markets, and that would
be the background of that.”

Apple’s iPhone operating system, iOS, has a little more than one
third market share in the UK versus Google’s Android operating
system. In some European countries, like Spain, Android has as
much as 90% market share. 

Vestager’s office still has one more ongoing investigation into
Google, on the question of whether the search giant uses its
Adsense advertising product to reduce competition. “We are
approaching the end also of that investigation,” she said.