▽ Establishment of App Market·Platform subdivision in ICT team
▽ Focused monitoring such as obstruction of competing app market
Photo = courtesy of Reuters
The Fair Trade Commission announced on the 18th that it has newly created the App Market Division and the On-Offline Linkage (O2O) Platform Division into a detailed division in the monitoring division of the ICT team.
The newly established App Market Division focuses on actions that hinder the emergence of new mobile operating systems (OS) and harm competition in related app markets and other smart device markets.
The App Market Division will also monitor the behavior of preventing developers from releasing apps (applications) to competitive markets, and forcing them to use specific payment methods. This can be interpreted as an action taken by the FTC with Google sanctions in mind.
The FTC is planning to propose an agenda at a plenary meeting this month regarding the allegations that Google interfered with competing app markets. Apart from this case, the FTC is investigating that Google has decided to force in-app payment (IAP, in-app payment) and charge a 30% fee.
Data = Provided by the FTC
The O2O platform subcommittee, established along with the Appmarket subcommittee, monitors forcing the lodging, delivery and online travel agency (OTA) apps to sell goods and services at the most favorable price and transaction terms for their platform.
The act of entering into an unfair contract with a delivery driver, artificially altering the platform exposure rankings, or deceived consumers with unclear advertisements are also subject to surveillance.
Meanwhile, the ICT dedicated team, launched in November 2019, is an organization designed to deal with unfair behavior cases of major domestic and foreign platform companies and respond to lawsuits. 20 employees and 18 external experts participate in the ICT team.
The FTC plans to actively utilize external experts in the process of operating a dedicated ICT team. Currently, a pool of external experts in the field of ICT related to economics, law, and technical technology is formed to collect opinions on the overall case handling process, and plans to increase the number of experts by division in the future.
Reporter Lee Mi-kyung, Hankyung.com [email protected]
Ⓒ Hankyung.com prohibits unauthorized reproduction and redistribution