Google, Apple face tighter monitoring

By Yoon Ja-young

The country’s antitrust watchdog plans to tighten monitoring of global IT giants this year, apparently targeting Google and Apple.

The Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said in its 2015 plan announced Sunday that it would focus monitoring global monopolistic companies abusing their dominance in the market. It cited as examples excluding competitors by abusing market dominance based on patents or demanding excessively high royalty from users.

“As it requires extreme professionalism to prove unfair practices, we will set up a special task force dedicated to the ICT sector comprising experts and veteran investigators,” the FTC said.

The regulator didn’t specify company names, but mobile operating system (OS) or platform businesses, such as Apple and Google, could be targets.

There has been increasing concern that a few players can abuse their power. For instance, when a platform company tries to start its own content business, it may disrupt fair competition by interfering with small contents businesses that have been using the platform.

“The top two companies take up 99.5 percent of the domestic mobile OS market. The unfair practices related with OS have been filed to the EU antitrust regulator,” the FTC said. The two companies dominating the OS market are Google and Apple. When asked if they are targets, however, the FTC said it wasn’t targeting specific companies.

“We will consider the special features of the OS and social networking service (SNS) platform markets as well as taking into account the global trend of regulation in these sectors,” the FTC said.

It also said that software companies dominating the market or those possessing standard technology will also be monitored for possibly abusing their power. Corporate software companies pressuring businesses to buy other software they don’t necessarily need in order to buy the main software or those abusing patents will face tough penalties, according to the FTC.

Unfair practices infringing on consumer rights will also face tough regulation. It cited broadband Internet services as an example. Consumer complaints about not being able to cancel subscription when they want have been increasing.

Foreign pyramid scheme companies that have been attracting consumers online will also be targets. As most of them aren’t registered with the regulator, consumers cannot get compensation. The FTC said it will cooperate with antitrust regulators overseas to crack down on them.