Apple’s App Store rules deserve scrutiny, says Mark Zuckerberg

Apple has been in the news of late for its alleged antitrust behaviour. On one hand, the European Commission has opened an antitrust investigation against the company’s App Store rules. On the other hand, Epic Games has sued the iPhone maker for removing Fortnite from its app store. Now, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said that Apple’s App Store ‘deserves scrutiny’.

The Facebook CEO told Axios on HBO that Apple has unilateral control over gets on iPhones in terms of the apps. “Well, I certainly think that they have the unilateral control of what gets on the phones in terms of apps...I think it’s probably about 50% of Americans who have smartphones and a lot more people around the world. I think there are more than a billion Apple devices. So I do think that there are questions that people should be looking into about that control of the App Store and whether that is enabling as robust of a competitive dynamic,” Zuckerberg said when asked whether or not he considered Apple a monopoly.

Zuckerberg also praised Google for allowing developers to sideload their apps on its ecosystem. "As a developer, if you're not in the Google Play Store, at least you still have a way to get your app on people's devices. And that means that people aren't completely going to be shut out if they're doing something that Google doesn't prefer. I think that that's really important, that people have a way to create something and get it on devices if people want," he said.

When pressed on whether or not the regulators should investigate Apple's App Store policies, the Facebook CEO discreetly said that Apple’s App Store rules ‘deserved scrutiny’. "I think I'm not necessarily the person to answer that, so I'm just trying to be sensitive to that, but I think some of the behaviour certainly raises questions and I do think it's something that deserves scrutiny, and they're getting scrutiny for it," Zuckerberg said.