US Senator Amy Klobuchar, the senior Senate Democrat on antitrust issues, said Apple’s announcement that it would introduce the AirTag tracker device was “timely,” as it was the kind of behavior her panel said in a hearing on Wednesday. wanted to discuss.
Apple Inc (AAPL.O) announced Tuesday that it would start selling AirTags, which can be attached to items such as car keys to help users find them if they are lost. The move puts Apple in direct competition with Tile, which has been selling a similar tracking device for over a decade.
Kyle Andeer, Apple’s Chief Compliance Officer, will testify at the hearing, as will Kirsten Daru, general counsel for Tile.
“It is timely, as this is the kind of behavior that we will be talking about at the hearing,” Klobuchar said, adding that criticisms of Apple and Google’s app stores had not received the attention they deserved. “It had been given a little less attention than I think it should have been.”
Apple said its AirTags were an outgrowth of its “FindMy” app, which is used to locate lost Apple devices and share user locations, and was introduced in 2010, before the creation of Tile. Apple opened its operating system to third-party item trackers last month and said Chipolo, a startup competing with both Tile and Apple’s new AirTags, is using the system.
“We’ve always embraced competition as the best way to create great experiences for our customers, and we’ve worked hard to build a platform in iOS that allows third-party developers to thrive,” Apple said in a statement.
Others on the witness list include Google Government Affairs Senior Director Wilson White, Spotify Chief Legal Officer Horacio Gutierrez, and Match Group Chief Legal Officer Jared Sine.
App makers such as music streaming service Spotify and dating app Match have long complained about mandatory revenue sharing and strict inclusion rules set by Apple’s App Store for iPhones and iPads, along with Google’s Play Store for Android devices amount to anti-competitive behavior.
In his testimonial, Match’s Sine is expected to argue that Google and Apple are both demanding a heavy 30% of every digital transaction, driving prices up for consumers.
Match pays nearly $ 500 million in fees annually to the app store, the company’s largest payout, Sine plans to say.
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