Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg used the opening comments of the company’s fourth quarter earnings conference call to criticize Apple for the upcoming privacy changes, and to say that Facebook increasingly sees Apple as a of its biggest competitors.
Apple is preparing for a software change that will ask iPhone and iPad users if they want to share their information for the purpose of tracking ads. The online advertising industry expects to be hit as some percentage of users choose not to share this information.
Facebook, which gets almost all of its revenue from online advertising, has spoken openly about the changes, running newspaper ads, posting a website and posting on a blog describing its arguments against Apple about the change that claims to “threaten personalized ads that millions of small businesses count on to find and reach customers. ”
Zuckerberg, in his comments, suggested that Apple uses its position to help its own services, especially its iMessage service, which competes with Facebook’s Messenger and WhatsApp services.
“IMessage is a key element of their ecosystem,” he said. “It comes pre-installed on every iPhone and they prefer it with APIs and private permissions, which is why iMessage is the most used messaging service in the United States”
He said that Apple’s businesses now increasingly depend on gaining share in applications and services.
“Apple has every incentive to use its dominance on the platform to interfere with the way our apps and other apps work, which they do regularly to prefer their own,” he said. “This impacts the growth of millions of businesses worldwide, including with the upcoming changes to iOS 14.”
Zuckerberg also reiterated Facebook’s argument that Apple’s privacy changes will make it more difficult for small businesses to reach their customers with targeted ads.
“Apple can say that it is doing this to help people, but the movements clearly track the interests of its competitors,” he said. “We and others will face this in the near future.”
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