Japan is investigating allegations that pressure from Apple forced Yahoo Japan to pull back from a game platform that competes with the App Store, reports Nikkei.
The article says Yahoo told “multiple business partners that it was forced to cut back because of pressure behind the scenes from Apple.” The Japanese company relies on the U.S. tech giant for part of its profits in the form of sales through the App Store.
The isn’t Apple’s first problem in Japan. Last month Japanese regulators at the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said Apple may have breached antitrust rules by forcing mobile service providers to sell its iPhones cheaply and charge higher monthly fees, denying consumers a fair choice.
The FTC said that the Japanese unit of the Cupertino, California-based company forced NTT Docomo, KDDI Corp., and SoftBank Group Corp. to offer subsidies and sell its smartphones at a discount. “Obliging carriers to offer subsidies (for iPhones) could have prevented the carriers from offering lower monthly charges and restricted competition,” the regulator agency said in a statement.
However, it added that it wasn’t punishing Apple as the company has agreed to revise its contracts with the carriers. This isn’t the first brush-up between the tech giant and Japanese officials.
In 2016, Apple’s iTunes unit in Japan was ordered to pay some 12 billion yen (about $118 million) in tax by local authorities after underreporting income. The Tokyo Regional Taxation Bureau determined that the unit, which sends part of its profits earned from fees paid by Japan subscribers to another Apple unit in Ireland to pay for software licensing, hadn’t been paying a withholding tax on those earnings in Japan.
