U.K. consumer rights group \u2018Which?\u2019 is filing a legal claim against Apple under competition law on behalf of some 40 million users of iCloud, its cloud storage service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The collective proceeding lawsuit, which is seeking \u00a33 billion in compensation damages (around $3.8 billion at current exchange rates), alleges that Apple has broken competition rules by giving its own cloud storage service preferential treatment and effectively locking people into paying for iCloud at \u201crip-off\u201d prices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201ciOS has a monopoly and is in control of Apple\u2019s operating systems and it is incumbent on Apple not to use that dominance to gain an unfair advantage in related markets, like the cloud storage market. But that is exactly what has happened,\u201d Which wrote in a press release announcing the filing of the claim with the U.K.\u2019s Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The lawsuit accuses Apple of encouraging users of its devices to sign up for iCloud for photo storage and other data storage needs, while simultaneously making it difficult for consumers to use alternative storage providers \u2014 including by not allowing them to store or back up all of their phone\u2019s data with a third-party provider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201ciOS users then have to pay for the service once photos, notes, messages and other data go over the free 5GB limit,\u201d Which noted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The suit also accuses Apple of overcharging U.K. consumers for iCloud subscriptions owing to the lack of competition. \u201cApple raised the price of iCloud for UK consumers by between 20% and 29% across its storage tiers in 2023,\u201d it wrote, saying it\u2019s seeking damages for all affected Apple customers \u2014 and estimating that individual consumers could be owed an average of \u00a370 (around $90), depending on how long they\u2019ve been paying Apple for iCloud services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A similar lawsuit \u2014 arguing Apple unlawfully monopolized the market for cloud storage \u2014 was filed in the U.S. back in March and remains pending after the company failed to get it tossed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
U.K. consumer rights group \u2018Which?\u2019 is filing a legal claim against Apple under competition law on behalf of some 40 million users of iCloud, its cloud storage service. The collective proceeding lawsuit, which is seeking \u00a33 billion in compensation damages (around $3.8 billion at current exchange rates), alleges that Apple has broken competition rules by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.timesofmedia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.timesofmedia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.timesofmedia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.timesofmedia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.timesofmedia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1018"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.timesofmedia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1019,"href":"https:\/\/www.timesofmedia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018\/revisions\/1019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.timesofmedia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.timesofmedia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.timesofmedia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}