In addition to Epic’s lawsuit against Apple, the Cupertino company has other open fronts. One of them is a US Senate investigation into antitrust laws, where we were able to learn some interesting details. One of them concerns low sales of Tile tags in the Apple Store, according to an executive from Tim Cook.
The Tiles “did not sell well” in the Apple Store
As a result of this investigation, Tile and other companies such as Match (owner of Tinder) and Spotify testified against the App Store. Focusing on the former and as they did in MacRumors, Tile acusó an apple to “use your platform to gain an unfair competitive advantage for your products”.
Specifically, Apple took advantage of the fact that Tile sold its products in physical stores in the block at collect information on your business performance. Something that would be very useful for the development of the new AirTag). The person in charge of conformity
Years ago, Apple had information about how Tile products were sold in Apple stores. They weren’t selling very well. Tile sells its products through dozens of retailers around the world and on its website.
All sales information in the Apple Store is both limited and very out of date, and is unlikely to differ from the information other physical stores have on products sold in their stores. In any case, Apple has never used this information in any decision process related to AirTag.
This is certainly not the first time that Apple has removed competing products from its physical stores. I did it at the end of 2014 with Fitbit after announcing your Apple Watch. Even if sometimes it is a new competitor who decides to withdraw them, as happened with the Phantom speakers from Devialet in 2018.