The ongoing Epic Games vs. Apple trial had revealed a lot of details about the inner workings of these companies. During the trial, Apple’s App Store VP Matt Fischer told the court that Apple always highlights apps from its competitors on the App Store.

Fischer made this statement after being presented with internal emails which suggested otherwise. As iMore notes, the email was from 2016 in which Apple employees were discussing a VoiceOver collection of apps that were to be promoted on the App Store.

Hi Andrea,

Just spoke with Tanya about featuring Google and Amazon apps in the VoiceOver collection and she asked us to exclude them from the lineup. Although they may be our best and the brightest apps, Matt feels extremely strong about not featuring our competitors on the App Store store, so Yanta asked us to apply the same filters for this collection. I’m sorry I didn’t check this earlier.

When this email was shown to Fischer during the trial, he said it was “not accurate” and the employee who sent it was “very misinformed.” Fischer then clarified that Apple has been promoting competitor apps before he even joined the App Store team in 2010. To prove his point, he highlighted how Apple had featured apps like Peacock, Hulu, and Hulu Plus despite them competing with Apple TV+.

Developers have long criticized that Apple does not promote apps that compete with its own apps and services. The company also does not give third-party apps the same privileges and benefits as its own iOS apps.