France fines Apple €150 million for abusing market dominance through App Tracking Transparency

Apple has been fined €150 million ($162 million) by France’s antitrust watchdog, Autorité de la concurrence, for allegedly exploiting its App Tracking Transparency (ATT) privacy framework to reinforce its dominant position in the mobile app advertising sector. The fine follows a broader European trend of increasing scrutiny on the tech giant’s business practices.

App Tracking Transparency, introduced in June 2020 and enforced from April 2021 with the release of iOS 14.5 and iPadOS 14.5, requires app developers to obtain user consent before tracking their activity across different applications and websites for advertising purposes. While ATT was marketed as a tool for enhancing user privacy, the French regulator concluded that Apple’s implementation of the framework created unfair advantages for its own advertising ecosystem while disadvantaging smaller app publishers reliant on third-party data collection.

According to the Autorité de la concurrence, the ATT framework disproportionately affected small publishers, as they depend on targeted advertising for revenue but lack Apple’s access to large-scale proprietary data. The regulator further criticized Apple for making the user experience of granting consent unnecessarily complex, requiring multiple confirmation steps while allowing users to refuse tracking with a single click. This design, the watchdog argued, placed third-party app publishers at a competitive disadvantage compared to Apple’s own applications, which were effectively exempt from the same constraints.

In its ruling, the French authority also highlighted that ATT, in its current form, does not align with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) due to its lack of neutrality. By implementing methods that make it harder for users to opt into third-party tracking while allowing Apple’s own services to operate with greater ease, the framework was deemed to distort competition in the mobile advertising industry.

Given the severity of the case, Apple’s market power, and the duration of the infringement—from April 26, 2021, to July 25, 2023—the competition regulator imposed the €150 million fine and mandated Apple to publish a summary of the decision on its website for seven consecutive days.

This penalty is the latest in a series of regulatory actions against Apple in Europe. In 2023, the European Commission fined the company €1.8 billion (approximately $1.95 billion) for allegedly using its App Store rules to stifle competition in the music streaming market. Additionally, in 2022, France’s data protection authority (CNIL) fined Apple €8 million ($8.5 million) for collecting user data for targeted ads on the App Store without proper user consent.