Telegram CEO Rants, Calls Apple 'A Trillion-Dollar Monopoly' Abusing 'Market Dominance'

Cloud-based instant messaging platform Telegram pulled out paid posts this week from its iOS app because of App Store guidelines. This was followed by a rant from its CEO Pavel Durov, who accused Apple of being a "trillion-dollar monopoly" abusing "market dominance."

In a lengthy post in his Telegram channel, Durov did not mince words slamming tech juggernaut Apple. The CEO revealed that Apple informed the platform that it would not allow content creators to use third-party payment methods for sales.

"Some content creators started using third-party payment bots to sell access to individual posts in their Telegram channels. This way, content creators could receive close to 100% of whatever their subscribers paid, which was great," he explained.

"Unfortunately, we received word from Apple that they were not happy with content creators monetizing their efforts without paying a 30% tax to Apple. Since Apple has complete control over its ecosystem, we had no alternative but to disable such paid posts on iOS devices," the CEO divulged.

"This is just another example of how a trillion-dollar monopoly abuses its market dominance at the expense of millions of users who are trying to monetize their own content. I hope that the regulators in the EU, India and elsewhere start taking action before Apple destroys more dreams and crushes more entrepreneurs with a tax that is higher than any government-levied VAT," he added.

"In the meantime, we at Telegram shall work to offer creators powerful and easy-to-use tools to monetize their content – outside of Apple's restrictive ecosystem," Durov further said. It is worth noting that this is not the first time Durov criticized Apple. In August, the CEO slammed Apple for holding the platform's upcoming update for a couple of weeks without any feedback or explanation.

"The only thing that we find discouraging is that we're often unable to distribute the new versions of Telegram due to the obscure "review process" imposed on all mobile apps by the tech monopolies," Durov said in August. "For example, our upcoming update – which is about to revolutionize how people express themselves in messaging – has been stuck in Apple's "review" for two weeks, without explanation or any feedback provided by Apple," he added.

"If Telegram, one of the top 10 most popular apps globally, is receiving this treatment, one can only imagine the difficulties experienced by smaller app developers. It's not just demoralizing: it causes direct financial losses to hundreds of thousands of mobile apps globally," the CEO further said.