The dispute between Apple and the FBI was the story that marked the beginning of 2016, but it seems that another dispute will be the star of the summer: Spotify vs. Apple. Yesterday, the undisputed leader of the streaming music sent a (public) Letter to Apple that complained because they had rejected their latest update, claiming that of Cupertino did harm to competition to favor their own services, but the response from Apple did not wait.
Apple lawyer, Bruce Sewell has been responsible for responding to Spotify in a three-page letter in which he accused to Spotify’s talk of “rumors and half-truths”, at the same time reminding them that they have profited from the App Store since the launch of its iOS application in 2009.
Spotify speaks of “rumours and half-truths”
There can be no doubt that Spotify has benefited immensely from its partnership with Apple’s App Store. Since he joined the App Store in 2009, the Apple platform has led to more than 160 million downloads of your application, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars in benefits to Spotify. That is the reason why we see a problem when you ask an exception to the rules that we apply to all developers and you publicly recurrís to rumors and half-truths about our service.
But the most interesting of the letter from Apple to Spotify is that they remind them they have delivered two updates that violated the rules of the App Store:
During a number of discussions between our team and Spotify, we explain the reason why this function of access does not meet our guidelines and ask that you spiritless to deliver a version of the application that met them. On June 10, Spotify delivered another application which again incorporated a function of access directing customers from the App Store to provide an email address so they could be contacted by Spotify directly in a continuous attempt to avoid our guidelines. The Spotify application was rejected again by trying to avoid shopping within the app and no guidelines, as you say, because Spotify is looking to communicate with its customers.
And if I said before that the most interesting letter was when they remembered that they delivered two versions which violated the rules of the App Store, perhaps I also was telling half-truths. What is probably most interesting is that in my opinion seems a veiled threat to withdraw the current version of the application, reminding them that the version that is now in the App Store also violates the rules:
As far as I can see, the application of Spotify that’s currently on the App Store still violates our guidelines. It would be happy to facilitate a quick review and approval of your application as soon as we give something that complies with the rules of the App Store.
If you wish, you can read the letter entire (in English) on BuzzFeed from this link. It seems that this story has done nothing more than start.
