Apple has new defeat, and Cade’s siege a big techs gains strength

At the end of 2024, Cade’s General Superintendence had determined that Apple allow other application stores to be installed on the brand’s telephone operating system. The measure is considered broad by experts in the area, and changes the company’s business model.

Apple had gotten an injunction to suspend the decision, but in March, Zuniga had already reversed the injunction. At the time, the judge wrote in his decision that “the absence of application distribution alternatives and payment systems in the iOS ecosystem generates immediate effects on developers, maintaining a market environment in which competitors face insurmountable difficulties to offer viable alternatives to consumers.”

Apple, after March, obtained a favorable decision in the court of first degree, this time with an analysis of merit and not in an injunction (provisional decision). Cade resorted to the TRF and was attended by Judge Zuniga. Therefore, the determinations imposed by the Cade were valid again.

Today, in a decision published at 11:24 AM, Zuniga complied with Cade and wrote that preventing the application of the agency’s measure favors “the maintenance of artificial barriers to competition, with deleterious effects on the structure of the digital market and the interest of consumers.”

The final judgment of merit is still pending by TRF-1. The case will also be analyzed by Cade, in the administrative level, as Apple appealed the decision of the general superintendence.

The debate on free competition is the main bet of the Lula administrative government to regulate the Big Techs environment. Reading government members, especially at the Ministry of Finance, is that the economic debate over Big Techs is less polarized than political discussion about content control and fake news. Therefore, the folder works to present a bill this semester on this semester.