Apple Exec: We Feature Competitors’ Apps ‘All The Time’ on the App Store
On May 3, the Epic Games vs. Apple trial got underway, and every day, brand-new e-mails in between Apple executives and employees continue to be shared by Epic as proof for its case versus Apple.
In the newest batch of emails, the vice president of the App Store, Matt Fischer, declares that Apple includes apps made by its competitors “all the time” on the shop and declines the belief that it looks for to deteriorate the direct exposure of those apps.
According to internal Apple correspondence submitted as evidence by Epic, an Apple employee wrote an email relating to a collection of apps on the App Store that were a part of the VoiceOver collection. In the email, which was forwarded to Sarah Herrlinger, Apples senior director of international accessibility policy, the staff member declares that Fisher feels “exceptionally strong” about not featuring contending apps on the platform. The email reads:
Hey Andrea,
Simply spoke with Tanya about featuring Google and Amazon apps in the VoiceOver collection and she asked us to omit them from the lineup. They might be our finest and the brightest apps, Matt feels incredibly strong about not featuring our rivals on the App Store shop, so Yanta asked us to use the same filters for this collection. Im sorry I didnt inspect this earlier.
Reacting to the claim made by the worker, Fischer states that Apple features and promotes completing apps on the App Store “all the time,” and mentions the particular example of Apple featuring Peacock, Hulu, and Hulu Plus on the platform, in spite of them competing with its own Apple TELEVISION+ streaming service.
Apple has long faced criticism that it reduces the exposure of completing third-party apps on the App Store when compared to its own apps. In 2019, the company changed its App Store algorithm after it recognized that a lot of its apps were ranking greater on App Store search engine result instead of apps made by other developers. In spite of the modification, research study from analytics firm Sensor Tower at the time revealed that first-party Apple apps ranked first for over 700 search terms.
( Via iMore).