It seems like a problem for the App Store from Apple is not coming to a close. Apple has already been facing Antitrust issues in many countries where they have been accused of giving an advantage to other developers’ apps and also promoting their own apps instead of third-party developers. The company has always been emphasizing on the fact that they have been trying to give equal opportunities to the apps on their platform without any loss in competition among them.
Now Cydia, who is a popular distributor for jailbroken devices before Apple launched App Store, filed a lawsuit Thursday against Apple in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, alleging Apple uses anti-competitive practices to assert a monopoly over software distribution on iOS. As per the lawsuit, Apple has eliminated all the competition in the app store market and also claims that Apple has tied App Store to iPhone purchases by pre-installing it on all the iOS making it the default option for the users to download the iOS apps.
As per the official details in the lawsuit, “Apple has wrongfully acquired and maintained monopoly power in the market for iOS app distribution, and in the market for iOS app payment processing. Apple has frozen Cydia and all other competitors out of both markets, depriving them of the ability to compete with the App Store and to offer developers and consumers better prices, better service, and more choice.“” Similar to this Epic Games brought a similar lawsuit against Apple accusing them of unfair practices and anti-competitive claims.