When attached to keys and other items, the tags communicate
with Apple devices to help users find the items if lost. They compete with
Tile, a startup company that has sold a similar device for more than a decade
and has testified to U.S. lawmakers that Apple's privacy practices have put
Tile's products at a disadvantage.
In a statement on Wednesday, Tile's Chief Executive CJ
Prober said lawmakers should examine Apple's entry to the tracker tag product
category at a U.S. Senate committee hearing where Tile will testify.
"We welcome competition, as long as it is fair
competition," Prober said. "Unfortunately, given Apple’s well
documented history of using its platform advantage to unfairly limit
competition for its products, we’re skeptical."
Apple said it had recently opened its iPhone's systems to
third-party tag trackers in ways that meet Apple's privacy standards.
“We have worked from the very beginning of iPhone to help
protect the privacy of users' location data, giving them transparency and
control over how all apps may access and share their location," Apple said
in a statement.
"We have always embraced competition as the best way to
drive great experiences for our customers, and we have worked hard to build a
platform in iOS that enables third-party developers to thrive.”
Tile will testify this week before the U.S. Senate Judiciary
Committee's antitrust panel headed by Senators Amy Klobuchar, the Democratic
chair, and Mike Lee, its ranking Republican. The hearing will focus on
competition concerns from developers who rely on Apple and Alphabet Inc-owned
Google's app stores to reach consumers.
Apple and Google executives will testify as will executives
from music streaming service Spotify Technology SA and dating service Match
Group, both of which have criticized Apple's requirements to use its payments
system and to pay commissions on sales from the App Store.
Tile's concerns have centered on Apple's privacy controls
and restrictions and whether Tile has the same access to the iPhone's hardware
and systems as Apple's own products.
In testimony last year, Tile said it had maintained a
productive relationship with Apple, selling its products in Apple's stores, but
that the relationship rapidly deteriorated in 2019 when Apple announced it
would enhance its "FindMy" app to work more like Tile.
Tile testified that Apple hired away one of its engineers
around that time and also tightened up its privacy controls by adding more
steps before third-party developers could access a user's location data, which
the Tile devices require to function. But to use Apple's FindMy system, third-party
developers face limits on how much data they can collect on customers. Tile
argued that the extra steps put its products at a disadvantage to Apple's own
FindMy app.
In 2020, Apple began to open up the FindMy app to
third-party developers. Last month, Apple opened the program, saying that it
would release a chip blueprint that third parties could use to take advantage
of the iPhone's hardware. Three companies have announced products that use
Apple's new system, including electric bike maker VanMoof and Chipolo, which
makes an item tracker similar to Tile's devices.
Tile has not said whether it plans to use Apple's program
for third-party access to the FindMy app.
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