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South Korean Trade Watchdog Alleges Google Abused Its Position in Android App Store

A pedestrian walks past the Google offices in London, Britain, August 14, 2025. (Reuters)
A pedestrian walks past the Google offices in London, Britain, August 14, 2025. (Reuters)
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South Korean Trade Watchdog Alleges Google Abused Its Position in Android App Store

A pedestrian walks past the Google offices in London, Britain, August 14, 2025. (Reuters)
A pedestrian walks past the Google offices in London, Britain, August 14, 2025. (Reuters)

South Korea's antitrust regulator alleged on Wednesday that Alphabet's Google abused its dominant position in the Android app marketplace to hinder competition and will recommend corrective measures and a financial penalty.

The Korea Fair Trade Commission's (KFTC) Market Surveillance Bureau found Google's alleged abuse of market dominance in the Android app marketplace affected 14.16 trillion won ($9.1 billion) in revenue, the bureau said in a media briefing where it released its examiner's report on the matter.

From July ‌2019 to March ‌2026, Google's Games/Google Velocity Program, which it ‌internally ⁠called "Project Hug", offered domestic ⁠and overseas game developers financial support for using Google services such as Cloud, Ads and YouTube, provided that they launched games on Google's app store on terms at least as favorable as rival app marketplaces, the report said.

The contracts were also structured so that Google's financial ⁠support increased progressively as developers generated more ‌revenue through Google Play, creating ‌stronger incentives to prioritize Google's marketplace.

The program significantly reduced developers' ‌incentives to distribute games through competing app stores, including South ‌Korea's OneStore, blocking rivals' business activities and forcing developers into de facto exclusive dealing with Google, according to the report.

"Google Play competes fairly with other app stores and delivers numerous benefits ‌to developers and consumers in Korea.

"We have cooperated diligently with the KFTC's investigation, and ⁠we will ⁠continue to show the Commissioners that there has been no violation of the law,” Google said in a statement to Reuters.

If the commission ultimately concludes that Google abused its market dominance, it may impose a fine of up to 6% of the relevant affected revenue of $9.1 billion.

Google has eight weeks from receiving the examiner's report to submit a written response and review the evidence.

The bureau said it plans to convene the full commission and issue a final ruling promptly once Google's due process rights have been fully observed.

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Technology

Samsung Electronics Denies Report That It Is Exploring US Listing

The logo of Samsung Electronics is seen at the company's store in Seoul, South Korea, April 15, 2025. (Reuters)
The logo of Samsung Electronics is seen at the company's store in Seoul, South Korea, April 15, 2025. (Reuters)
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Samsung Electronics Denies Report That It Is Exploring US Listing

The logo of Samsung Electronics is seen at the company's store in Seoul, South Korea, April 15, 2025. (Reuters)
The logo of Samsung Electronics is seen at the company's store in Seoul, South Korea, April 15, 2025. (Reuters)

Samsung Electronics denied on Tuesday a report that it was in the early stages of exploring a potential US offering of American Depositary Receipts (ADRs).

"Samsung Electronics is not reviewing the possibility of issuing American Depositary ‌Receipts," a ‌Samsung spokesperson said in ‌a ⁠statement.

On Tuesday, Bloomberg ⁠News reported that Samsung has held preliminary discussions with banks, but has not yet made a decision about whether to proceed, ⁠citing people familiar ‌with the matter, ‌adding that the discussions might ‌not result in a listing.

The ‌South Korean chipmaker previously reviewed the possibility of an ADR offering before ultimately deciding against ‌it, though the successful US listing of SK ⁠Hynix has ⁠given Samsung fresh motivation to revisit the idea, the report said.

Last week, rival SK Hynix priced its ADRs at $149 each, raising about $26.5 billion in the largest-ever US listing by a foreign company.

Technology

China Smartphone Shipments Fall for Fifth Straight Quarter as Costs Rise

A customer looks at a new Huawei Pura 70 series smartphone, as the series models go on sale at a Huawei's flagship store in Beijing, China April 18, 2024. (Reuters)
A customer looks at a new Huawei Pura 70 series smartphone, as the series models go on sale at a Huawei's flagship store in Beijing, China April 18, 2024. (Reuters)
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China Smartphone Shipments Fall for Fifth Straight Quarter as Costs Rise

A customer looks at a new Huawei Pura 70 series smartphone, as the series models go on sale at a Huawei's flagship store in Beijing, China April 18, 2024. (Reuters)
A customer looks at a new Huawei Pura 70 series smartphone, as the series models go on sale at a Huawei's flagship store in Beijing, China April 18, 2024. (Reuters)

China's smartphone shipments fell 4.3% to 66 million units in the second quarter from a year earlier, as many manufacturers hiked prices to ‌reflect rising memory ‌and component costs, research firm ‌IDC ⁠said on Tuesday.

It ⁠was the fifth straight quarterly decline, and first-half shipments were down 4.2% from a year earlier.

Huawei Technologies and Apple were the only vendors to post growth in the quarter, with shipments up 19.4% and 24.4%, ⁠respectively.

"Huawei and Apple held their ‌prices steady while ‌competitors were raising theirs, and that gave hesitant buyers ‌a reason to go ahead and purchase ‌in a quarter when most of the market was giving them a reason to wait," said Arthur Guo, a senior analyst at IDC China.

Huawei ‌ranked first with a 22.6% market share, while Apple came second with ⁠an ⁠18.1% share. Xiaomi , which ranked fifth, saw its second-quarter shipments down 21.7%, with Oppo and Vivo seeing shipments fall 9.7% and 11.4%, respectively.

Most Android vendors raised prices or cut back on budget models in response to surging memory chips and other component costs, discouraging consumers from upgrading. The fading effect of government subsidies also removed a prop that had supported demand in earlier quarters, IDC said.

Technology

Meta Expands Louisiana Data Center to 5 Gigawatts Compute Capacity

FILE PHOTO: The logo of Meta at the Meta Lab in Los Angeles, California, US, May 20, 2026. REUTERS/Daniel Cole/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: The logo of Meta at the Meta Lab in Los Angeles, California, US, May 20, 2026. REUTERS/Daniel Cole/File Photo
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Meta Expands Louisiana Data Center to 5 Gigawatts Compute Capacity

FILE PHOTO: The logo of Meta at the Meta Lab in Los Angeles, California, US, May 20, 2026. REUTERS/Daniel Cole/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: The logo of Meta at the Meta Lab in Los Angeles, California, US, May 20, 2026. REUTERS/Daniel Cole/File Photo

Meta said ‌on Monday its data center in Richland Parish, Louisiana will expand to 5 gigawatts of compute capacity, in a bid to support the social media company's AI ambitions.

Since breaking ground in December 2024, local Louisiana businesses have received more than $1.6 billion ‌in contracts from Meta, ‌the company said.

Here ‌are ⁠some details:

* Meta ⁠said that the data center expansion is an investment of more than $50 billion in the Richland Parish region.

* Last year, US President Donald Trump ⁠had said the company's data ‌center project ‌would cost $50 billion.

* With this ‌expansion, the company said it ‌plans to invest over $1 billion in local infrastructure improvements, including roads, water and wastewater systems.

* Meta, like its ‌Big Tech peers, has been pouring billions of dollars into ⁠AI ⁠data centers and computing power, as demand continues to outstrip supply.

* The company has pledged to invest $600 billion in US infrastructure and jobs over the next three years, as it builds out massive data centers to power CEO Mark Zuckerberg's aggressive bets on AI agent technologies.