September 2023 interim report30 Sep 2023
The ACCC will consider potential competition and consumer issues and benefits from the expanding ecosystems of digital platform providers in Australia. This report will also consider smart home devices and consumer cloud storage solutions as examples of the expanding ecosystems of digital platform providers.
This report is the seventh interim report for the Digital Platform Services Inquiry and will consider the following areas relevant to expanding ecosystems of digital platform providers:
- The expansion strategies of digital platform providers
- The role of data in the expanding ecosystems of digital platform providers
- The level of interrelatedness of products and services within a digital platform ecosystem, including whether interrelated through technical interoperability or by commercial practices such as bundling
- Strategies to lock consumers into a single digital platform ecosystem
- Potential competition issues, such as bundling and tying, self-preferencing and pre-installation arrangements and default settings
- Potential consumer harms, such as conduct associated with the use of consumer data, dark patterns or other unfair or misleading behaviours
This report is due to be provided to the Treasurer by 30 September 2023.
Media release
Expanding digital platform ecosystems to be examined by ACCC
Issues paper
To inform this report, the ACCC released an issues paper on 8 March 2023 seeking views on the expanding ecosystems of digital platform providers in Australia from interested stakeholders. The ACCC invites submissions on the matters outlined in this Issues Paper by 5 April 2023.
Submissions to the issues paper
The ACCC received the following submissions from interested parties in response to the issues set out in the issues paper.