Lawmakers Eye App Competition

A new letter to the Federal Trade Commission by Rep Hank Johnson (D-GA) and friends asks the agency to probe the “increasing difficulty that app developers have in reaching and communicating with customers in some app ecosystems.” But the note has a pretty clear target: the war between Apple and Spotify. The letter appears to side with Spotify, which has fiercely opposed Apple’s practice of collecting 30 percent of all new subscriptions to services that are sold through the Apple App Store. The two companies have clashed repeatedly over the issue since Apple began making plans to enter the music-streaming business — with Spotify arguing that Apple is acting anti-competitively.