Microsoft believes it’s time for antitrust regulators to fully investigate Apple’s App Store. Speaking during a Politico interview this week, Microsoft’s chief legal officer Brad Smith outlined Apple’s walled garden approach to its App Store, and how it’s affecting competition.
“If you look at the industry today, I think what you’ll find is increasingly you’re seeing app stores that have created higher walls and far more formidable gates to access other applications than anything that existed in the industry 20 years ago,” says Smith. “They impose requirements that increasingly say there’s only one way to get onto our platform, and that is to go through the gate that we ourselves have created. In some cases they create a very high price for a toll, in some cases 30 percent of all your revenue has to go to the toll keeper if you will.”
