Japan’s Fair Trade Commission is reportedly investigating Apple to see whether the company “improperly pressured” Yahoo Japan into shutting down a competitor to the iOS store.
According to the Verge, the Commission is “looking into whether Apple improperly pressured Yahoo Japan to shut down a game streaming platform that competed with the iOS App Store.”
“Yahoo Japan’s Game Plus service allowed people to stream full games made for other platforms and to play HTML5 games on mobile phones, which would have allowed iPhone owners to get games without going through the App Store,” the Verge explained, adding that Yahoo admitted to slashing the service’s budget “due to pressure from Apple.”
It is not the first time that the Japanese Fair Trade Commission has looked into Apple’s practices, and in July, Reuters reported the company “may have breached antitrust rules by forcing mobile service providers to sell its iPhones cheaply and charge higher monthly fees, denying consumers a fair choice.”
Google, Apple’s main competitor in the smartphone operating system field, has faced its own problems. In July, Google was hit by a record fine of 4.3 billion Euros for anti-competitive practices centered on its Android OS. This fine doubles the previous record high fine in Europe, which was also levied on Google in 2017.
Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington, or like his page at Facebook.