Apple CEO Tim Cook will defend Apple’s App Store policies, and identify Google and Huawei as “fierce” rivals to the iPhone in his antitrust congressional testimony on late Wednesday. In particular, he’ll submit that the 30% commission that Apple charges from developers on in-app purchases — which has been heavily criticised — is “comparable” to some of its competitors, according to a prepared testimony. Cook won’t be alone at the congressional hearing, as CEOs of the other three Big Tech companies: Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, and Google’s Sundar Pichai will join him in testifying in front of the House Judiciary Committee’s antitrust panel. Highlights from Cook's prepared testimony App Store policies aren’t anti-competitive: “Apple’s commissions are comparable to or lower than commissions charged by the majority of our competitors. And they are vastly lower than the 50 to 70 percent that software developers paid to distribute their work before we launched the App Store,” Cook will say, according to a prepared testimony. He says that for the “vast majority” of apps on the App Store, developers keep 100% of the money they make. “The only apps that are subject to a commission are those where the developer acquires a customer on an Apple device and where the features or services would be experienced and consumed on an Apple device,” Cook will say. However, he doesn’t specify why Apple doesn’t allow apps to redirect users to an external source to purchase subscriptions etc. (more on that below) When the…
