We don’t favour our own apps: Apple

• Homemade apps shown first in 60% of categories in Apple’s app store
  
• Apple targeted by Dutch investigators for allegedly favouring own apps in App Store
  
• Apple earlier accused of unfavourable App store practices by streaming companies
  

Apple is under scrutiny for its search algorithms that apparently rank the company’s apps first during searches for ‘music’, ‘audiobooks’ etc. The company was also recently the target of a Dutch investigation for allegedly favouring its own apps on the App Store.

A Wall Street Journal report states that Apple’s own apps are shown first in 60% of the categories in the App Store and in 95% of sales-generating categories, even when apps from competing companies are more popular.

As an example, Venturebeat found that Apple Books ranked 168th in its category by downloads despite no user ratings. It was positioned above Amazon’s Kindle App which is widely well-received with a 4.8 rating from 1.2 million users. Similarly, Google’s Maps app was positioned below the largely inferior Apple Maps, that doesn’t even feature in the top 100 in the Navigation category.

In a statement to the Wall Street Journal, Apple said, “Apple customers have a very strong connection to our products and many of them use search as a way to find and open their apps, this customer usage is the reason Apple has strong rankings in search, and it’s the same reason Uber, Microsoft and so many others often have high rankings as well.”

In the recent past, companies have spoken out against Apple’s App store practices. Spotify filed an antitrust case with the EU over the 30% tax it levies through subscriptions through its payments system. Similarly, Netflix pulled out from being part of the upgraded Apple TV app, only a few months the company started redirecting their customers to its web app to avoid paying Apple’s 30% fee.