‘Fortnite' unavailable on Apple devices worldwide

Hit game 'Fortnite' was unavailable on Apple's digital App Store around the world on Friday, in the latest episode of a battle between the tech titan and publisher Epic Games. While Fortnite with its millions of daily players was already unavailable to iPhone users in the United States, the block on downloads of the cartoonish multiplayer shooter now affects the entire globe. 'Apple has blocked our Fortnite submission... sadly, Fortnite on iOS will be offline worldwide until Apple unblocks it,' Epic posted on X.
Apple told AFP it had asked Epic in Sweden to resubmit its app update 'without including the US storefront of the App Store so as not to impact Fortnite in other geographies'. 'We did not take any action to remove the live version of Fortnite from alternative distribution marketplaces,' an Apple spokesperson said.
Epic has for years battled tech giants over the commissions they charge for software downloaded through the official stores on operating systems like Apple's iOS and Google's Android. These are historically the only way for most users to install programs onto their devices.
Although it has secured wins in US courts and European Union digital regulations, Epic on Friday effectively accused Apple of slow-walking the vetting process it enforces before making an app or game available for users to download. Epic said last week that it had submitted 'Fortnite' for review for listing in the App Store in the United States. As well as being 'blocked' there, the publisher added that 'Fortnite' was also unavailable in the European Union.
Fans there can usually download the game through the company's own app store as the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA), which went into effect last year, requires Apple and other US tech giants to open up their platforms to competition.
'Fortnite' is a heavyweight of the gaming world, with Epic claiming around 500 million users in 2023. But players have grown used to upsets as the publisher has filed legal cases against both Apple and Google over what it calls 'junk fees'. Apple's commissions for App Store purchases, which can range as high as 30 percent, come 'at the expense of consumers and developers', the company wrote on X last week.
Epic has faced off against Apple in US courts since 2021, when 'Fortnite' was banned from the App Store over what Apple said was an attempt to get around the iPhone maker's payment system. A judge found that the App Store was anticompetitive as it forbade developers from offering alternative avenues for payment. But the conflict has endured past the US court order and the EU's requirement that Apple and Google allow third-party app stores on their operating systems.
A US federal judge said earlier this month that Apple was failing to comply with her three-year-old order that emerged from Epic's case, which requires the iPhone maker to allow other avenues for users to buy content or services. Epic quickly capitalized on the new court action, submitting Fortnite afresh to be vetted for inclusion in the App Store. 'We don't have an update on our Fortnite submission to the App Store. Apple has neither accepted nor rejected it,' chief executive Tim Sweeney wrote on X Thursday.
Revenue stream
Apple had made a priority of building up its services business as the Silicon Valley titan tries to reduce its reliance on iPhone sales for revenue. The unit, which includes Apple's television and music streaming services along with iCloud data storage and App Store income, now accounts for more than a quarter of the company's revenue. Apple last week sought to delay a part of the court order that blocks it from charging commissions on transactions outside the App Store, Bloomberg reported.
The App Store changes include letting app makers use alternate payment systems free or charge or commission. Epic had cast the order as an opening of the floodgates to allow other software developers to escape Apple's fees. Swedish music streaming service Spotify was among the first to take advantage of the ruling, offering links in its iOS app to purchase subscriptions outside the App Store.--AFP

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

Kuwait Times

5 hours ago

• Kuwait Times

Europe seeks ‘digital sovereignty' as US tech firms embrace Trump

US tech companies still dwarf alternative providers BERLIN: At a market stall in Berlin run by charity Topio, volunteers help people who want to purge their phones of the influence of US tech firms. Since Donald Trump's inauguration, the queue for their services has grown. Interest in European-based digital services has jumped in recent months, data from digital market intelligence company Similarweb shows. More people are looking for e-mail, messaging and even search providers outside the United States. The first months of Trump's second presidency have shaken some Europeans' confidence in their long-time ally, after he signaled his country would step back from its role in Europe's security and then launched a trade war. 'It's about the concentration of power in US firms,' said Topio's founder Michael Wirths, as his colleague installed on a customer's phone a version of the Android operating system without hooks into the Google ecosystem. Wirths said the type of people coming to the stall had changed: 'Before, it was people who knew a lot about data privacy. Now it's people who are politically aware and feel exposed.' Tesla chief Elon Musk, who also owns social media company X, was a leading adviser to the US president before the two fell out, while the bosses of Amazon, Meta and Google-owner Alphabet took prominent spots at Trump's inauguration in January. Days before Trump took office, outgoing president Joe Biden had warned of an oligarchic 'tech industrial complex' threatening democracy. Berlin-based search engine Ecosia says it has benefited from some customers' desire to avoid US counterparts like Microsoft's Bing or Google, which dominates web searches and is also the world's biggest email provider. 'The worse it gets, the better it is for us,' founder Christian Kroll said of Ecosia, whose sales pitch is that it spends its profits on environmental projects. Similarweb data shows the number of queries directed to Ecosia from the European Union has risen 27 percent year-on-year and the company says it has 1 percent of the German search engine market. But its 122 million visits from the 27 EU countries in February were dwarfed by 10.3 billion visits to Google, whose parent Alphabet made revenues of about $100 billion from Europe, the Middle East and Africa in 2024 - nearly a third of its $350 billion global turnover. Non-profit Ecosia earned 3.2 million euros ($3.65 million) in April, of which 770,000 euros was spent on planting 1.1 million trees. Google declined to comment for this story. Reuters could not determine whether major US tech companies have lost any market share to local rivals in Europe. Digital sovereignty The search for alternative providers accompanies a debate in Europe about 'digital sovereignty' - the idea that reliance on companies from an increasingly isolationist United States is a threat to Europe's economy and security. 'Ordinary people, the kind of people who would never have thought it was important they were using an American service are saying, 'hang on!',' said UK-based internet regulation expert Maria Farrell. 'My hairdresser was asking me what she should switch to.' Use in Europe of Swiss-based ProtonMail rose 11.7 percent year-on-year to March compared to a year ago, according to Similarweb, while use of Alphabet's Gmail, which has some 70 percent of the global email market, slipped 1.9 percent. ProtonMail, which offers both free and paid-for services, said it had seen an increase in users from Europe since Trump's re-election, though it declined to give a number. 'My household is definitely disengaging,' said British software engineer Ken Tindell, citing weak US data privacy protections as one factor. Trump's vice president JD Vance shocked European leaders in February by accusing them - at a conference usually known for displays of transatlantic unity - of censoring free speech and failing to control immigration. In May, Secretary of State Marco Rubio threatened visa bans for people who 'censor' speech by Americans, including on social media, and suggested the policy could target foreign officials regulating US tech companies. US social media companies like Facebook and Instagram parent Meta have said the European Union's Digital Services Act amounts to censorship of their platforms. EU officials say the Act will make the online environment safer by compelling tech giants to tackle illegal content, including hate speech and child sexual abuse material. Greg Nojeim, director of the Security and Surveillance Project at the Center for Democracy & Technology, said Europeans' concerns about the US government accessing their data, whether stored on devices or in the cloud, were justified. Not only does US law permit the government to search devices of anyone entering the country, it can compel disclosure of data that Europeans outside the US store or transmit through US communications service providers, Nojeim said. Mission impossible? Germany's new government is itself making efforts to reduce exposure to US tech, committing in its coalition agreement to make more use of open-source data formats and locally-based cloud infrastructure. Regional governments have gone further - in conservative-run Schleswig-Holstein, on the Danish border, all IT used by the public administration must run on open-source software. Berlin has also paid for Ukraine to access a satellite-internet network operated by France's Eutelsat instead of Musk's Starlink. But with modern life driven by technology, 'completely divorcing US tech in a very fundamental way is, I would say, possibly not possible,' said Bill Budington of US digital rights nonprofit the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Everything from push notifications to the content delivery networks powering many websites and how internet traffic is routed relies largely on US companies and infrastructure, Budington noted. Both Ecosia and French-based search engine Qwant depend in part on search results provided by Google and Microsoft's Bing, while Ecosia runs on cloud platforms, some hosted by the very same tech giants it promises an escape from. Nevertheless, a group on messaging board Reddit called BuyFromEU has 211,000 members. 'Just cancelled my Dropbox and will switch to Proton Drive,' read one post. Mastodon, a decentralized social media service developed by German programmer Eugen Rochko, enjoyed a rush of new users two years ago when Musk bought Twitter, later renamed X. But it remains a niche service. Signal, a messaging app run by a US nonprofit foundation, has also seen a surge in installations from Europe. Similarweb's data showed a 7 percent month-on-month increase in Signal usage in March, while use of Meta's WhatsApp was static. Meta declined to comment for this story. Signal did not respond to an e-mailed request for comment. But this kind of conscious self-organizing is unlikely on its own to make a dent in Silicon Valley's European dominance, digital rights activist Robin Berjon told Reuters. 'The market is too captured,' he said. 'Regulation is needed as well.'— Reuters

Arab Times

10-06-2025

• Arab Times

Apple unveils software overhaul amid AI stumbles, tech turmoil

CUPERTINO, Calif., June 10, (AP): After stumbling out of the starting gate in Big Tech's pivotal race to capitalize on artificial intelligence, Apple tried to regain its footing Monday during an annual developers conference that focused mostly on incremental advances and cosmetic changes in its technology. The presummer rite, which attracted thousands of developers from nearly 60 countries to Apple's Silicon Valley headquarters, subdued compared with the feverish anticipation that surrounded the event in the last two years. Apple highlighted plans for more AI tools designed to simplify people's lives and make its products even more intuitive. It also provided an early glimpse at the biggest redesign of its iPhone software in a decade. In doing so, Apple executives refrained from issuing bold promises of breakthroughs that punctuated recent conferences, prompting CFRA analyst Angelo Zino to deride the event as a "dud' in a research note. In 2023, Apple unveiled a mixed-reality headset that has been little more than a niche product, and last year WWDC trumpeted its first major foray into the AI craze with an array of new features highlighted by the promise of a smarter and more versatile version of its virtual assistant, Siri - a goal that has yet to be realized. "This work needed more time to reach our high-quality bar,' Craig Federighi, Apple's top software executive, said Monday at the outset of the conference. The company didn't provide a precise timetable for when Siri's AI upgrade will be finished, but indicated it won't happen until next year at the earliest. "The silence surrounding Siri was deafening," said Forrester Research analyst Dipanjan Chatterjee said. "No amount of text corrections or cute emojis can fill the yawning void of an intuitive, interactive AI experience that we know Siri will be capable of when ready. We just don't know when that will happen. The end of the Siri runway is coming up fast, and Apple needs to lift off.' The showcase unfolded amid nagging questions about whether Apple has lost some of the mystique and innovative drive that has made it a tech trendsetter during its nearly 50-year history. Instead of making a big splash as it did with the Vision Pro headset and its AI suite, Apple took a mostly low-key approach that emphasized its effort to spruce up the look of its software with a new design called "Liquid Glass" while also unveiling a new hub for its video games and new features like a "Workout Buddy' to help manage physical fitness. Apple executives promised to make its software more compatible with the increasingly sophisticated computer chips that have been powering its products while also making it easier to toggle between the iPhone, iPad, and Mac. "Our product experience has become even more seamless and enjoyable,' Apple CEO Tim Cook told the crowd as the 90-minute showcase wrapped up. IDC analyst Francisco Jeronimo said Apple seemed to be largely using Monday's conference to demonstrate the company still has a blueprint for success in AI, even if it's going to take longer to realize the vision that was presented a year ago. "This year's event was not about disruptive innovation, but rather careful calibration, platform refinement, and developer enablement -positioning itself for future moves rather than unveiling game-changing technologies,' Jeronimo said. Besides redesigning its software. Apple will switch to a method that automakers have used to telegraph their latest car models by linking them to the year after they first arrive at dealerships. That means the next version of the iPhone operating system due out this autumn will be known as iOS 26 instead of iOS 19 - as it would be under the previous naming approach that has been used since the device's 2007 debut. The iOS 26 upgrade is expected to be released in September around the same time Apple traditionally rolls out the next iPhone models. Apple opened the proceedings with a short video clip featuring Federighi speeding around a track in a Formula 1 race car. Although it was meant to promote the June 27 release of the Apple film, "F1' starring Brad Pitt, the segment could also be viewed as an unintentional analogy to the company's attempt to catch up to the rest of the pack in AI technology. While some of the new AI tricks compatible with the latest iPhones began rolling out late last year as part of free software updates, the delays in a souped-up Siri became so glaring that the chastened company stopped promoting it in its marketing campaigns earlier this year. While Apple has been struggling to make AI that meets its standards, the gap separating it from other tech powerhouses is widening. Google keeps packing more AI into its Pixel smartphone lineup while introducing more of the technology into its search engine to dramatically change the way it works. Samsung, Apple's biggest smartphone rival, is also leaning heavily into AI. Meanwhile, ChatGPT recently struck a deal that will bring former Apple design guru Jony Ive into the fold to work on a new device expected to compete against the iPhone. Besides grappling with innovation challenges, Apple also faces regulatory threats that could siphon away billions of dollars in revenue that help finance its research and development. A federal judge is currently weighing whether proposed countermeasures to Google's illegal monopoly in search should include a ban on long-running deals worth $20 billion annually to Apple while another federal judge recently banned the company from collecting commissions on in-app transactions processed outside its once-exclusive payment system. On top of all that, Apple has been caught in the crosshairs of President Donald Trump's trade war with China, a key manufacturing hub for the Cupertino, California, company. Cook successfully persuaded Trump to exempt the iPhone from tariffs during the president's first administration, but he has had less success during Trump's second term, which seems more determined to prod Apple to make its products in the U.S. The multidimensional gauntlet facing Apple is spooking investors, causing the company's stock price to plunge by 20% so far this year - a decline that has erased about $750 billion in shareholder wealth. After beginning the year as the most valuable company in the world, Apple now ranks third behind longtime rival Microsoft, another AI leader, and AI chipmaker Nvidia.

Arab Times

09-06-2025

• Arab Times

Asian shares rally ahead of US-China trade talks

HONG KONG, June 9, (AP): Shares rose in Asia on Monday ahead of a new round of trade talks between Washington and Beijing, due later in the day in London. Tokyo's Nikkei 225 gained 0.9% to 38,088.57 as the government reported that the Japanese economy contracted by 0.2% in the January-March quarter. In South Korea, the Kospi added 1.6% to 2,855.77. Chinese markets rose even though the government reported that exports slowed in May, growing 4.8% from a year earlier after a jump of more than 8% in April. Exports to the United States fell nearly 10% compared with the same month in 2024. China also reported that consumer prices fell 0.1% in May from a year earlier, marking the fourth consecutive month of deflation. Hong Kong's Hang Seng picked up 1.1% to 24,044.90 while the Shanghai Composite Index climbed 0.4% to 3,397.63. Australia's market was closed for a holiday. On Friday, stocks gained ground on Wall Street following a better-than-expected report on the US job market. The gains were broad, with every sector in the S&P 500 rising. That solidified a second consecutive winning week for the benchmark index, which has rallied back from a slump two months ago to come within striking distance of its record high. The S&P 500 rose 1% to 6,000.36. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 1% to 42,762.87 while the Nasdaq gained 1.2% to 19,529.95. Technology stocks, with their outsized values, led the broad gains. Chipmaker Nvidia jumped 1.2% and iPhone maker Apple rose 1.6%. Tesla rose 3.7%, regaining some of the big losses it suffered on Thursday when Trump and Musk sparred feverishly on social media. Circle Internet Group, the US-based issuer of one of the most popular cryptocurrencies, rose 29.4%. That adds to its 168% gain from Thursday when it debuted on the New York Stock Exchange.