In the context of increasing global scrutiny of the power and "gatekeepers" of large technology companies, apple defended its ecosystem in documents submitted to the Australian Competition Authority Since last year, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has carefully examined Apple's ecosystem in a series of surveys and encouraged the company to give users more control over pre installed applications and services.
In a detailed response to the discussion paper of ACCC's digital platform service survey, apple believed that the proposed changes to its ecosystem "will reduce the motivation of dynamic companies like apple to innovate and develop new differentiated products" and expose users to an "environment far less secure and privacy protected than before".
Apple believes that it is perplexing that competition and consumer protection agencies will give priority to so-called competition issues, which lack strong evidence of harm, rather than the clear and real serious harm users experience every day. This is not the result of legislative reform that consumers want to see - they want stronger rather than weaker protection - hundreds of thousands of Australians are embezzled, cheated, traded and used every year, causing damage to them.
Apple highlighted the confidential data it submitted to ACCC, which showed that "users' willingness to switch between devices and platforms is meaningful, consistent and rising, and they have the ability to do so." The company also argued that it competed with "other software distribution platforms to attract developers into the app store", and took web applications as an example to illustrate "alternative means for developers to distribute applications to IOS users".
Australia is one of many countries and regions that vigorously review the apple ecosystem and threaten to make universal legislation to try to force it to change, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, South Korea, the European Union and so on. The policy objectives of global regulators hope to explore requirements around app store policy, app sideloading and interoperability.
For more information, see Apple's full response to ACCC: