Apple faces a $2.7 billion class-action lawsuit, accused of unfair application tracking rules against third-party developers and gaining an improper advantage for its own advertising ecosystem.

Apple Inc. is facing a class-action lawsuit in London seeking up to £2 billion (approximately $2.7 billion) in damages. The suit was filed today at the Competition Appeal Tribunal in London, initiated by Ann Pope, a former senior official at the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority, on behalf of app developers. The core allegation is that Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) feature, launched in 2021, imposes stricter restrictions on third-party developers than on its own services, granting Apple’s in-house advertising ecosystem an unfair competitive advantage. Ann Pope stated that Apple’s policies have "caused very significant harm to businesses that rely on Apple as a gatekeeper." Since its rollout, ATT has been a longstanding focus of global regulatory scrutiny. Apple’s official stance is that the feature is designed to let users control whether apps track their activity across other companies and websites. However, plaintiffs argue there is a double standard in the rule’s implementation: third-party apps’ tracking requests require strict pop-up authorization, while Apple’s own personalized ads and services can bypass equivalent restrictions. This lawsuit is the latest legal challenge facing Apple over its ATT policy, and marks the first major private antitrust lawsuit in the UK targeting Apple’s app ecosystem rules, following regulatory reviews from the EU, the U.S., and multiple other countries.