Latest news with #FooYunChee
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Exclusive-Apple set to stave off daily fines, EU to accept App Store changes, sources say
By Foo Yun Chee BRUSSELS (Reuters) -Apple's changes to its App Store rules and fees will likely secure the green light from EU antitrust regulators, people with direct knowledge of the matter said, a move that would stave off potentially hefty daily fines for the iPhone maker. The company last month said developers will pay a 20% processing fee for purchases made via the App Store, though the fees could go as low as 13% for Apple's small-business program. Developers who send customers outside the App Store for payment will pay a fee between 5% and 15%. They will also be able to use as many links as they wish to send users to outside forms of payment. Apple made the changes after the EU antitrust enforcer handed it a 500 million euro ($586.7 million) fine in April and gave it 60 days to comply with the Digital Markets Act aimed at reining in Big Tech and giving rivals more room to compete. The European Commission is expected to approve the changes in the coming weeks, although the timing could still change, the people said. "All options remain on the table. We are still assessing Apple's proposed changes," the EU watchdog said. Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The company earlier this month said it had implemented the changes to avoid punitive daily fines, while criticising the Commission for mandating how it runs its store. The company could have been hit with daily fines of 5% of its average daily worldwide revenue, or about 50 million euros per day. ($1 = 0.8554 euros) (Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Editing by Jan Harvey)
Time of India
5 days ago
- Business
- Time of India
Corning staves off antitrust fine as EU regulators accept concessions to mobile phone makers
By Foo Yun Chee BRUSSELS: EU antitrust regulators on Friday accepted glass maker Corning 's offer to waive exclusive deals with mobile phone makers and glass processing companies and scrap purchasing clauses to end an eight-month long investigation and stave off a possible fine. The U.S. company, which sells a break resistant glass used as a cover for mobile phones, tablets and smart watches under the Gorilla Glass brand, counts Samsung , Sony , Google, HP, Dell and Nokia as its customers. Apple is reportedly a customer too. Corning submitted concessions to the European Commission in November last year. Corning has now agreed "to waive all exclusive dealing clauses in all its current agreements with OEMs (original equipement makers) and finishers", the EU antitrust enforcer said in a statement. It will also not require OEMs to purchase, or cause their supply chain to purchase, more than 50% of their demand from the company. The offer is valid for 9 years. EU antitrust violations can cause companies as much as 10% of their turnover.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Microsoft likely to sign EU AI code of practice, Meta rebuffs guidelines
By Foo Yun Chee BRUSSELS (Reuters) -Microsoft will likely sign the European Union's code of practice to help companies comply with the bloc's landmark artificial intelligence rules, its president told Reuters on Friday, while Meta Platforms rebuffed the guidelines. Drawn up by 13 independent experts, the voluntary code of practice aims to provide legal certainty to signatories. They will have to publish summaries of the content used to train their general-purpose AI models and put in place a policy to comply with EU copyright law. The code is part of the AI Act which came into force in June 2024 and will apply to Google owner Alphabet, Facebook owner Meta, OpenAI, Anthropic, Mistral and thousands of companies. "I think it's likely we will sign. We need to read the documents," Microsoft President Brad Smith told Reuters. "Our goal is to find a way to be supportive and at the same time one of the things we really welcome is the direct engagement by the AI Office with industry," he said, referring to the EU's regulatory body for AI. Meta reiterated its criticism of the code. "Meta won't be signing it. This code introduces a number of legal uncertainties for model developers, as well as measures which go far beyond the scope of the AI Act," Meta's chief global affairs officer Joel Kaplan said in a blog post on LinkedIn on Friday. The U.S. social media giant has the same concerns as a group of 45 European companies, he said. "We share concerns raised by these businesses that this over-reach will throttle the development and deployment of frontier AI models in Europe, and stunt European companies looking to build businesses on top of them," Kaplan said. OpenAI and Mistral have signed the code.
The Star
6 days ago
- Business
- The Star
Corning staves off antitrust fine as EU regulators accept concessions to mobile phone makers
BRUSSELS (Reuters) -EU antitrust regulators on Friday accepted glass maker Corning's offer to waive exclusive deals with mobile phone makers and glass processing companies and scrap purchasing clauses to end an eight-month long investigation and stave off a possible fine. The U.S. company, which sells a break resistant glass used as a cover for mobile phones, tablets and smart watches under the Gorilla Glass brand, counts Samsung, Sony, Google, HP, Dell and Nokia as its customers. Apple is reportedly a customer too. Corning submitted concessions to the European Commission in November last year. Corning has now agreed "to waive all exclusive dealing clauses in all its current agreements with OEMs (original equipement makers) and finishers", the EU antitrust enforcer said in a statement. It will also not require OEMs to purchase, or cause their supply chain to purchase, more than 50% of their demand from the company. The offer is valid for 9 years. EU antitrust violations can cause companies as much as 10% of their turnover. (Reporting by Foo Yun Chee)
Yahoo
15-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
X hit by complaints to EU over user data and targeted advertising
By Foo Yun Chee BRUSSELS (Reuters) -Elon Musk's X social media platform has been hit by complaints by nine civil society organisations to EU and French regulators over what they say is its use of users' data for targeted advertising that may breach EU tech rules. The organisations - AI Forensics, the Centre for Democracy and Technology Europe, Entropy, European Digital Rights, Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte e.V. (GFF), Global Witness, Panoptykon Foundation, Stichting Bits of Freedom and VoxPublic said they took their complaint to the European Commission and the French media regulator Arcom on Monday. They urged both regulators to take action under the Digital Services Act (DSA) which prohibits advertising based on sensitive user data such as religion, race and sexuality. X, the Commission and Arcom did not immediately respond to emailed requests for comment. "We express our deep concern regarding the use by X of users' sensitive personal data for targeted advertisements," the organisations said in a statement. They said their concerns were triggered after they looked into X's Ad Repository which is a publicly available database set up by companies as part of a DSA requirement. "We found that major brands as well as public and financial institutions engaged in targeted online advertising based on what appear to be special categories of personal data, protected by Article 9 of the GDPR, such as political opinions, sexual orientation, religious beliefs and health conditions," they said. The group called on the regulators to investigate X. GDPR refers to the EU data privacy law.
