From “EXCLUSIVE Apple to face EU antitrust charge over NFC chip – sources” posted Wednesday:
Apple will be hit with an EU antitrust charge over its NFC chip technology, people familiar with the matter said, a move that puts it at risk of a possible hefty fine and could force it to open its mobile payment system to rivals.
The iPhone maker has been in European Union antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager’s crosshairs since June last year when she launched an investigation into Apple Pay.
Preliminary concerns were Apple’s NFC chip which enables tap-and-go payments on iPhones, its terms and conditions on how mobile payment service Apple Pay should be used in merchants’ apps and websites, and the company’s refusal to allow rivals access to the payment system.
My take; Vestager seems determined to dismantle the walled garden, one anticompetitive brick at a time.
AC power is already a century old and we don’t have global standards. Ordinary power tools for cooking, carpentry, and yard-work don’t have universal nor interchangeable charging devices.
As for opening up payments, she must be mad.
The EU’s mission has been to promulgate solutions in search of a problem.
Vestager is a bureaucrat that is out of control. She is the epitome of a regulator with an apparently boundless budget and an agenda that serves her, not the public. Of course having someone like that in charge only demonstrates that the EU is out of control and rapidly becoming dysfunctional. I used to think proponents of Brexit were crazy. Not any more.
She fails to understand the compelling language utilized by the Federal District Court Judge in the Epic v. Apple case that said: “Success is not illegal!”
Really PED?!