By
Godfrey Benjamin
April 23rd, 2024
It is said that Apple is being investigated by the Russian anti-monopoly watchdog. Kaspersky Lab filed a complaint pointing out that the company might be abusing its dominant positions in the market.
Recently, Kaspersky Lab filed a complaint about Apple with the anti-monopoly watchdog in Russia, claiming that the company is using its market monopoly. This whole fuss started when Kaspersky Lab’s latest version of their Safe Kids application was not approved by Apple’s operating system. Kaspersky claims that this resulted in a significant loss in functionality of the app.
Safe Kids is a parental control mobile app, which allows parents to control their kids mobile devices. The story thickens when Apple released their new, 12thversion of a similar app to Safe Kids, called Screen Time. Screen Time has practically the same functions as Safe Kids, so it’s obvious why Apple is being investigated.
However, it turns out that Apple already notified its customers about such possible restrictions. When Apple was approached with questions about this issue, they referred this to the previous statement made on April 28. In the statement they said that they have recently removed several parental control apps because these apps “put users’ privacy and security at risk”. Apple says that some of these apps used a “highly invasive” technology called Mobile Device Management (MDM). Altogether, this was considered as a violation of the App Store policies.
However, Kaspersky Lab says that App Store guidelines used to allow limited use of MDM. But Apple didn’t specify how to obtain these permissions, in order to use the technology.
Rise of Apple’s Stock Price
Recently Apple closed its long-awaited financial results for Q3. The projected revenue topped many analysts’ estimates who predicted that the Q3 earnings will bring in $53.4 billion. The company managed to go over it, and to surprised all analysts by showing revenue of $53.8 billion.
This immediately shot the AAPL stock price up by 4%. But the stock itself has seen constant growth in the last days. The stock price has gone from $192 to $201 in just three days.
At the moment, Apple is experiencing a slightly small decline in iPhone sales. The total iPhone revenue in Q3 had shrunk from $26.54 billion to $25.99 billion. For some, this would be considered as a minimal change and they wouldn’t even raise concerns when looking at the numbers, but it still is a little more than half of billion dollars.
“These results are promising across all our geographic segments, and we’re confident about what’s ahead. The balance of calendar 2019 will be an exciting period, with major launches on all of our platforms, new services and several new products,” commented Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook.
That’s obvious that the CEO just tried to be optimistic. Nevertheless, only time will show whether this optimism will bear fruits.