Apple he had never spent so much on it lobby before 2022. The company is on track to make 2022 the year it spent most trying to influence politics and governments.
No wonder: the bitten apple has been under constant attack for a few years now. On the one hand the anvil of the many international antitrust investigations, on the other the legislative proposals – such as the approved EU DMA – that threaten to undermine the business model.
In the first half of 2022, Apple spent about $4.6 million on lobbying. That is one and a half million more than what it spent in the same period of 2021. Breaking down the data over the two quarters, we obtain that in the first three months of 2022, Apple increased its lobbying costs by 85% year-on-year, while costs fell by no more than 2 million in the following three months.
According to a Bloomberg report, Apple’s CEO is also trying to influence politics. In fact, Tim Cook is one of the most politically engaged CEOs in the United States.
Despite this, Apple remains one of the tech companies that spends the least amount of money on lobbying. Meta – the parent company of Facebook and WhatsApp – as well as Google and Amazon spend significantly more each year to influence governments and promote regulation that is beneficial to their interests.
Source: Lega Nerd
