Polish regulator joins global wave of scepticism over Apple‘s practices with allegations of abuse of dominance. At stake in the App Tracking Transparency game is not just data protection, but billions of zlotys from the mobile advertising market.
The President of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (OCCP), Tomasz Chróstny, has initiated antitrust proceedings against Apple. The axis of the dispute is the App Tracking Transparency (ATT) policy, implemented in 2021, which in the iOS and iPadOS ecosystems forces developers to obtain user consent to track their activity. While the move appears pro-privacy from a consumer perspective, the Polish regulator sees it as a mechanism for market-based elimination of competition. The essence of the problem is the dual role of the US giant, which acts simultaneously as a ‘guardian’ of the ecosystem (regulator) and an active participant in the advertising market, competing for budgets with third-party app publishers.
OCC analysts point to a fundamental asymmetry in user communication. In the case of independent developers, the iOS system displays a warning message asking permission to ‘track’, which evokes negative associations and drastically reduces conversion rates (opt-in). Meanwhile, Apple’s own services, pursuing the same de facto business objective, ask the user to enable ‘personalised ads’. This semantic and visual difference – ‘Ask not to be tracked’ versus ‘Enable’ buttons – creates an uneven playing field for those profiting from behavioural advertising.
In the opinion of the President of the OCCP, such action may constitute an abuse of a dominant position, punishable by a fine of up to 10 per cent of the company’s turnover. Significantly, the President of the OCC confirmed that ATT’s strict framework does not derive directly from data protection legislation, undermining the corporation’s line of defence based on legal necessity. The effects of these practices are felt most acutely by independent publishers and advertisers, for whom impeded access to data means a reduction in the value of advertising space and a weaker negotiating position.
The Polish investigation is part of a wider European trend. Similar proceedings are being conducted by antitrust authorities in Germany, Italy and Romania, and the French regulator has already taken decisions resulting in multi-million dollar fines. For the IT industry, the signal from Warsaw is clear: the privacy-first argument is no longer an absolute shield against interference with the business model of closed ecosystems.
