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Spotify, Match Group, and Epic Games join forces to challenge Apple

Spotify, Match Group and Epic Games are joining the Coalition for App Fairness, a nonprofit pushing for changes in the App Store. Yahoo Finance's Dan Howley joins Akiko Fujita to discuss.

Video Transcript

AKIKO FUJITA: Let's talk about another stock that we've been watching closely. Apple shares, they're up about 1.8% there, even as tech, as the company faces more pushback on its apps store policy. We've got Spotify, Match Group and Epic Games now the latest company to join this nonprofit group coalition for app fairness. So what specifically are they calling for in terms of the changes in the App Store? And the larger question, how significant an impact are they likely to have?

DAN HOWLEY: I don't think it's going to have as large impact as they may like. They're really calling for essentially a drop in the commissions that Apple and Google charge, though their website specifically targets Apple a lot. And that's because they were just $2 trillion, they're one of the largest companies in the world. And also, the only way to get access to Apple apps is through the app store, whereas Google has its Google Play store. But you could also still download third party app stores and get apps onto your device through there. So that would explain why they're going after them.

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But I think that this is basically, I've said this before, they smell blood in the water from the FTC investigation, the DOJ investigation, the states attorneys general investigation, the House Judiciary Committee's investigation, all those fun investigations that are ongoing, and they want to basically put a stamp on that and say, look, we know that Apple is in trouble.

There could be issues with antitrust coming forward, so why don't we just ensure that we get our point across a little bit more with this handy lobbying site. And that's exactly what they're doing. They're based out of DC. It's going to be, it's a nonprofit, but it's a lobbying group essentially basically on behalf of these app companies that have a problem with the commissions that Apple and Google charge.

AKIKO FUJITA: Yeah, certainly strength in numbers at least. No doubt, that's how these companies see it. Whether that leads to actual charges of anti-competitive behavior is something that we'll continue to watch. Thanks so much for that, Dan.