Nipponica

Japan's antitrust watchdog on Tuesday announced guidelines under a new law to regulate monopolistic practices in the smartphone app market, mainly targeting U.S. tech giants Apple Inc. and Google LLC.

The core of the guidelines issued by the Japan Fair Trade Commission is a ban on discriminatory treatment of app stores not operated by the two platform companies. If more app stores compete and lower the commissions they charge developers, app prices for users could also fall, analysts said.

Somewhere in Cupertino, a rich executive is crying.