Apple has been the target of an antitrust complaint in Germany for three years over its App Tracking Transparency feature. ATT allows iPhone users to request that apps not track their activity between other apps.
Now the Bundeskartellamt (Federal Cartel Office) in Germany has issued its “preliminary legal assessment” which alleges that ATT only applies to third-party apps and not Apple, violating antitrust policy. In turn, Apple has responded.
In today’s release, the German antitrust group alleges that Apple holds third-party apps to a different privacy standard than Apple’s own apps, specifically when it comes to activity tracking for advertising.
The Bundeskartellamt has today sent Apple Inc., Cupertino, USA, and Apple GmbH, Munich, its preliminary legal assessment of Apple’s “App Tracking Transparency Framework” (ATTF).
Since the implementation of the ATTF in April 2021, providers offering apps in the iOS App Store have had to obtain additional consent from users before gaining access to certain data for advertising purposes.
However, the strict requirements under the ATTF only apply to third-party app providers, not to Apple itself. In the Bundeskartellamt’spreliminary view, this may be prohibited under the special abuse control provisions for large digital companies (Section 19a(2) of the German Competition Act (GWB)) and under the general abuse control provisions of Article 102 TFEU.
Meanwhile, App Tracking Transparency has basically become a non-issue for major advertising apps like Facebook. Meta has actually improved its advertising prowess and been empowered by ATT, partially with the help of AI, to target users more precisely than with lazy third-party tracking.
Apple has responded to the latest development in this three-year-long process. Of note, Apple disputes that App Tracking Transparency does not apply to its own apps.
Apple has led the way in developing industry leading technologies to provide users great features without compromising privacy. App Tracking Transparency gives users more control of their privacy through a required, clear, and easy-to-understand prompt about one thing: tracking. That prompt is consistent for all developers, including Apple, and we have received strong support for this feature from consumers, privacy advocates, and data protection authorities around the world.
Apple additionally holds itself to a higher standard than it requires of any third-party developer by providing users with an affirmative choice as to whether they would like personalized ads at all. And Apple has designed services and features such as Siri, Maps, FaceTime, and iMessage such that the company cannot link data across those services even if it wished to do so.
We firmly believe that users should control when their data is shared, and with whom, and will continue to constructively engage with the Federal Cartel Office to ensure users continue to have transparency and control over their data.
An Apple spokesperson also noted that the company saw small developers (those earning $1 million or less annually) grow revenue by 37% between 2020 and 2022. Apple says the iOS app economy in Germany supports over 400,000 jobs in the country as well.
Separately, App Tracking Transparency has been an indisputable success when it comes to putting data control in the hands on consumers — thanks it large part to its simplicity. That’s according to a European Commission report that highlights the awareness and utilization of Apple’s tracking control feature:
Although there is little published data related to consumer awareness and use of Google’s Ad Settings, a study by Tschantz et al. found that only 5.4% of respondents had opted out of tracking on Google services via Google Ad Settings. By contrast, 70-80% of users have opted out of tracking on devices via Apple’s ATT tool. This significant difference may indicate a lack of consumer awareness and/or difficulties in accessing and using Google Ad Settings.
Again, the verdict seems to have long been out for App Tracking Transparency. Customers are regularly using the tool, and the advertising industry has moved on and found success with first-party user information that’s legally obtainable — even with app tracking disabled by the user.
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