South Korea's Fair Trade Commission told Google on Sept. 15 that Samsung Electronics and other device manufacturers have interfered with competitors'OS market by restricting devices carrying derivative versions of Android (fork OS). In violation of the abuse of market dominance and unfair trading under the Fair Trade Law, corrective action orders and surcharges of 207.4 billion won (about 19.5 billion yen, 1 won = about 0.094 yen) were imposed.
Starting in 2011, the case forced Google to sign an Anti-fragmentation Agreement (Anti-Fragmentation Agreement:AFA), as long as Google signed a "Mobile App Circulation Agreement" required by Samsung Electronics and other device manufacturers, as well as an "Android advance access Agreement."
Under the Anti-fragmentation Agreement, sales of devices with competitive operating systems are restricted not only on smartphones, but also on devices such as smartwatches and smart TVs. Due to non-competitive contracts, OS services for mobile terminals such as Amazon Point of the United States and Alibaba Group of China have failed. As a result, the sale of new smart devices such as smartwatches and smart TVs with fork OS has become impossible. Technological advances in other areas of OS development for smart machines have been greatly hampered.
With regard to this order, the Fair Trade Commission "provides an opportunity to prepare the competitive environment in OS and app stores for mobile terminals through this measure, which is meaningful", especially in smart devices such as smartwatches, cars, robots and so on. He believes that it is important that innovative equipment and services lay the foundation for the emergence of the foundation.
It is worth mentioning that Google commented that it would sue the order.
(note 1) Google LLC, Google Asia Pacific and Google Portugal.
(note 2) Fork OS is an OS that adapts the source code of Google's open source Android OS, which is a competitive OS for Google.
(note 3) the Mobile App Circulation Agreement is a contract to carry content from stores, Google search, youtube and other services on the terminal. The advance access contract for Android is six months before Google released the latest version of the Android source code. A contract in which source code is disclosed only to devices that have an advance access contract, and the Anti-fragmentation Agreement stipulates that equipment manufacturers are not allowed to sell devices with fork OS carried by other operators.
(between Zhengming)