Mercado Libre files complaints against Apple

E-commerce giant Mercado Libre has filed complaints against Apple over anti-competitive practices with antitrust authorities in Brazil and Mexico. 

The US-based company is accused of abusing a monopoly for distributing apps for its devices. 

In a statement, Mercado Libre explained that Apple has imposed a number of restrictions on the distribution of digital goods and in-app purchases, including the ban on third-party apps, digital goods and services such as films, music, video games, books and distribute written content. 

In the complaint, the South American company criticized the California tech giant for requiring developers offering digital goods or services in apps to use Apple’s own payment system and preventing them from redirecting shoppers to their websites.

“This clearly hurts its competitors unless they are integrated digital giants themselves, which could even benefit from this artificial propensity towards integrated ecosystems,” Jacobo Cohen Imach, senior vice president of Legal and Public Affairs, said in a statement. 

“Mercado Libre” announced that the complaints against “Apple” had been filed with the Brazilian antitrust authority CADE as well as with the Mexican Federal Telecommunications Agency and the Federal Commission for Economic Competition.

With information from latinapress

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