Apple is facing a £2 billion lawsuit in the UK after being accused of imposing ‘unfair’ app tracking rules on third-party developers.
The legal action was filed at London’s Competition Appeal Tribunal on Thursday by ATT Collective Action Limited, led by Ann Pope, a former senior official with UK regulator the Competition and Markets Authority.
The App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework, launched in 2021, requires user authorisation to access data tracked across other apps. Developers say it has significantly hit their ability to generate revenues through advertising, while increasing the cost of attracting new users.
The lawsuit argues that Apple has applied less restrictive standards to its own advertising and data collection activities. It also claims that Apple did not consult app developers on the changes.
Pope said Apple’s policy “resulted in very significant harm to businesses that depend on Apple as a gatekeeper”.
“This action is important to protect the rights of British businesses that depend on Apple, to ensure that the rules that Apple applies are fair, and to compensate the losses that British companies have suffered,” she said.
Apple said the framework was created “to give users a simple way to control whether apps have permission to track their activity” and that it was “bound by the exact same requirements as all developers”.
The framework has attracted regulatory scrutiny across Europe. In Germany last month Apple agreed to rule changes on how developers can use personal data for targeted advertising, while authorities in countries including France, Italy and Poland have initiated investigations.