Siri
antitrust concerns have been expressed by businesses, says the European
Union's competition chief, with the same issues being raised about Alexa and
Google
Assistant. The remarks were made after a consultation process that heard
from more than 200 companies over the course of a year.
Competition head Margrethe Vestager said there are four concerns.
The EU antitrust watchdog said respondents cited worries over certain
exclusivity and tying practices related to voice assistants such as
producers of
smart devices being prevented from installing a second voice assistant on a
device.
A second concern was about voice assistant providers promoting their own
services or those of third parties via default settings on devices, thus
restricting
rivals.
A third concern focused on the troves of data available to providers of
voice assistants and smart devices, while a fourth worry was about the lack
of
inter-operability between devices.
Now that the commission has heard from businesses, the next stage is to
understand the views of consumers.
"From the preliminary results published today, it appears that our concerns
are shared by many players," said Vestager, [adding that] it was too early
to say if the inquiry would lead to cases against companies which will be
decided after a 12-week long public consultation ending September 1st and a
final report
due in the first half of 2022.
Of all the
antitrust
charges leveled at Apple, this seems one of the stranger ones. Different
voice assistants compete against each other, and it's common for smart home
devices
to be controllable by more than one of them. Indeed, in the case of devices
that are compatible with either
HomeKit
or Siri Shortcuts, it's hard to think of any that can't also be controlled
by Alexa and Google Assistant.
Apple hadn't responded to a request for comment at the time of writing, but
Amazon said that there was no shortage of competition in this market.
"There will not, and should not, be one winner. Today, Alexa is compatible
with over 140,000 smart home products, and we make it easy for device makers
to integrate Alexa directly into their own products," a spokesperson said.
Amazon went on to say it has signed up 80 companies to its Voice
Interoperability Initiative which gives customers the ability to access
multiple voice
services on a device.
Apple announced at WWDC that Siri will for the first time be
coming to third-party devices
like smart thermostats. Many responded by expressing a wish for Sonos
speakers to be included.
By <https://9to5mac.com/author/benlovejoy/> Ben Lovejoy at:
shttps://9to5mac.com/2021/06/09/siri-antitrust-concerns/
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