ROME— Italy’s competition authority has fined Apple and its local subsidiaries €98 million for abusing a dominant market position through the App Store by imposing tracking rules that unfairly burden app developers.

The authority said Apple exploited its dominance in the iOS app distribution market by enforcing its App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework in a way that goes beyond what is required under privacy law.

Regulators concluded that Apple forced third-party developers to obtain duplicate user consent for advertising-related data, undermining ad-based business models without providing proportionate privacy benefits.

According to the ruling, Apple should have been able to guarantee the same level of user privacy by allowing developers to obtain consent for profiling in a single step, rather than imposing additional consent requirements.

The decision follows a lengthy investigation conducted in coordination with the European Commission and Italy’s data protection authority, which examined the competitive impact of Apple’s ATT policy on developers and the digital advertising market.

App Tracking Transparency, introduced in 2021, requires apps distributed via the App Store to display a standardized pop-up seeking user permission before tracking activity across other apps and websites. When users decline consent, developers lose access to data commonly used for targeted advertising.

European regulators have increasingly scrutinized the policy. In March, France’s competition authority fined Apple €150 million, finding that the implementation of ATT placed an undue burden on app developers and was not strictly necessary to protect user privacy.

Competition authorities across the bloc have raised concerns that the system, imposed unilaterally by Apple, disadvantages third-party developers and advertising intermediaries, while Apple continues to benefit from its own advertising activities within the iOS ecosystem.— Agencies