A Ukrainian startup has filed a complaint to the European Union’s competition office against U.S. tech giant Apple, a move that has attracted a lot of media scrutiny over the past two weeks.
Tech startup Kidslox accuses Apple of abusing its monopoly and “killing the industry” of the parental-control mobile applications, the bread and butter of Kidslox.
Kidslox has created an application to help phone users limit screen time or oversee their children’s phone use. But for almost a year now, Apple has rejected to release the company’s updates on its App Store five times.
Despite being outdated, Kidslox remains available on App Store, unlike 11 other most downloaded third-party parental-control apps that have been deleted by Apple over the last year. It includes Ourpact, Mobicip, and Сurbi.
Kidslox says Apple’s hostile activity against third-party app developers started in the summer of 2018, when Apple introduced its own parental-control feature on iPhones. For these apps business had plummeted, as 75–80 percent of their revenue comes from the App Store downloads.
Now with the complaint filed, Kidslox hopes to reinstate the normal work of its app and gain a financial compensation, according to Ukrainian publication MC Today.
Meanwhile, Apple stated on April 28 it removed the apps to defend iOS users from security breaches. These parental-control apps, according to the U.S. tech enterprise, “put users’ privacy and security at risk.”
The reason is that all of them use so-called mobile device management software, abbreviated as MDM. This “incredibly risky” software “gives a third party control and access over a device and its most sensitive information including user location, app use, email accounts, camera permissions and browsing the history,” Apple stated.
Apple claimed using it was a violation of App Store guidelines.
However, using MDM is the only way for application developers like Kidslox to make parental-control apps for the Apple platform. And there’s no way for a maker of a parental-control app to remove MDM functionality and still have a working product.
Hence, Kidslox said Apple’s statement has been “misleading,” and other developers also claimed that it “contradicted” with Apple’s own documentation about the technology.
Tony Fadell, a former Apple executive dubbed as the “father of the iPod,” has supported the Ukrainian startup, urging Apple to “give developers what they need — a proper screen time (software) for data and control.”
Kidslox submitted the lawsuit on April 25, but the news started spreading rapidly after the New York Times published a story titled “Apple Cracks Down on Apps That Fight iPhone Addiction” on April 27. After that, BBC, CNN, Wired, Techcrunch, the Verge, Mirror, Sky News, Independent, The Times have also covered it.
In Ukraine, the story gained attention after a publication by Ekonomichna Pravda on May 6, after which almost every major Ukranian media source has written about it as well.
The Kyiv Post’s technology coverage is sponsored by Ciklum and NIX Solutions. The content is independent of the donors.
