The Federal Cartel Office is now allowed to more strongly control Apple, as the company has a “cross-market significance for competition”. This was decided by the Federal High Court in a ruling published on Tuesday, following Apple’s second appeal against a corresponding finding by the Cartel Office in April 2023. As a result, the federal authority will be able to prohibit certain business practices by Apple in the future.
The Karlsruhe judges highlight the role of Apple’s “App Store” in the company’s market position. “Since Apple’s activity has a significant impact on the access of third parties to procurement and sales markets, Apple has a significant influence on their business activities” the ruling states. External app developers and other third-party companies rely on Apple’s support to gain access to the large number of Apple device users. In combination with the company’s extremely powerful position in the smartphone market, these competitive and strategic possibilities justify the Cartel Office’s decision.
Apple also has significant amounts of user data. “The products and services offered by Apple to the users of its devices are to a high degree vertically integrated and interconnected and in many cases reserved for users of Apple devices.” Although it is not assumed that Apple has access to purely local or encrypted user data, as the company claims it neither legally nor technically has access to such data, the company ultimately has a broad and deep access to data.
“This is already evident from Apple’s data protection policy, according to which users often have to give consent to the release of data in many cases in order to use Apple’s products and services in a certain way” the Federal High Court states. Even under the assumption that only a small part of users grant such consent, the company would still have access to a very large amount of data due to its global user base (ruling of March 18, 2025 – KVB 61/23).