this week apple and spotify are back in court due to an ongoing eu antitrust case in 2021 the eu preliminarily concluded that the app store showed unfair favouritism towards apple music to the disadvantage of other music streaming services like spotifydespite being charged for unfair treatment of competitors like spotify within its app store apple insists that it has already made sufficient changes and does not need to make any further adjustments however spotify disagrees and claims that the recent policy changes made by the app store are purely cosmetic and do not address the underlying problem of apples antisteering regulationsspotify no longer allows users on iphone to subscribe to the premium plan through the iphone app it shows users a message reading cant upgrade to premium in the app and says we know its not ideal in february the european union withdrew some of its complaints against apples commission charges for digital goods and the mandatory use of apples inapp purchase system however the remaining complaint focuses on apples policy of prohibiting apps from informing customers about other subscription options such as through a web browserthe commission has stated that the antisteering obligations violate eu regulations prohibiting unfair trading conditions this legal argument is relatively new in antitrust casesaccording to apple the case initiated by spotifys complaint in 2019 has no basis as spotify has a larger market share in europe than apple music ranked third or fourth in most eu countriesapple will defend itself against the eus accusations of imposing illegal restrictions on apps like spotify in a hearing on friday the company will argue that developers are not prevented from directing users away from the app storeif apple is unable to persuade the commission and antitrust regulators that it has not violated eu regulations the company may face a fine of up to 10 of its yearly sales however it is rare for penalties to reach such high amounts