No, they are punishing because the ATT pop-up is not enough to comply with privacy rules, requiring 3rd party apps to have a secondary pop-up to be compliant (which Apple's own apps wouldn't need since they don't use ATT).

So it's more that Apple's ATT is not compliant with stricter privacy rules, not the opposite...

As far as I can understand, the fine is for having a prompt for 3rd party apps, but not apple's own apps. Then I'm not sure because even to me, the wording used by the authority is not entirely clear, but the issue would lie in a different treatment reserved for 3rd parties compared to 1st party apps

> What happens if Apple just exits the Italian market? They can create their own Apple competitor, I guess.

My guess is that if they want to do that, they'd also need to leave the European market as a whole, as many countries share similar laws and regulations, besides the ones that applied across the entire European Union. And since Europe seems to represent ~25% total revenue in 2025 for Apple, that feels like a highly unlikely choice for them to do, considering they're a public company and have obligations to the shareholders.

It's about 3rd party vs apple's own.

> What happens if Apple just exits the Italian market?

They can’t.

If they did, the company (and thus shareholders) would lose money. Shareholders would vote out the board, and the new board would appoint a CEO who would promptly re-enter the Italian market.

This is why corporations get slapped around by regulators everywhere, even though on the surface, the regulators need the company far more than the other way round.