Apple faces a $2.7 billion class action lawsuit: accused of unfair application tracking rules against third-party developers, gaining improper advantages in its own advertising ecosystem

According to a report by Reuters, Apple Inc. is facing a class-action lawsuit in London, with claims amounting to £2 billion (approximately $2.7 billion). The lawsuit was filed today in the London Competition Appeal Tribunal by Ann Pope, a former senior official of the UK Competition and Markets Authority, on behalf of app developers.

The core accusation is that Apple's "App Tracking Transparency" (ATT) feature, launched in 2021, imposes stricter restrictions on third-party developers than on its own services, giving Apple's own advertising ecosystem an unfair competitive advantage. Ann Pope stated that Apple's policies "have caused significant harm to businesses that rely on Apple as a gatekeeper."

Since its launch, the ATT feature has remained a focal point for global regulators for several years. Apple's official stance is that the feature is designed to allow users to control whether to permit apps to track their activities across other companies and websites.

However, the plaintiffs argue that the actual implementation of this rule has double standards—tracking requests from third-party apps require strict pop-up authorization, while Apple's own personalized ads and services can bypass the same restrictions. This lawsuit represents the latest legal challenge Apple faces regarding its ATT policy and is the first large-scale private antitrust lawsuit initiated in the UK market against Apple's app ecosystem rules following scrutiny from regulators in the EU, the US, and multiple countries.