A few hours after Apple unveiled its highly anticipated AirTag, Tile CEO CJ Prober issued a statement expressing his concerns about competition in the field of item tracking.
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According to retransmit TechCrunch, Prober said that while Tile welcomes “fair competition,” the company is “skeptical” about Apple’s goals, given its “history of using the platform’s advantage to unfairly limit competition.” “.
Tile plans to ask Congress to take a look at Apple’s specific Find My business practices and compete with other item tracking options. The full statement is shown below:
Our mission is to solve the daily pain of finding lost and lost things and we are flattered to see Apple, one of the most valuable companies in the world, enter and validate the pioneering tile category.
The reason so many people turn to Tile to locate their lost or lost items is because of the differentiated value we offer our consumers. In addition to providing an industry-leading feature set through our iOS and Android-enabled app, our service integrates seamlessly with all major voice assistants, including Alexa and Google. And with the form factors for each use case and many different styles at affordable prices, there is a mosaic for everyone.
Tile has also successfully partnered with top brands such as HP, Intel, Skullcandy and Fitbit to enable our search technology in mass market consumer categories such as laptops, headsets and laptops. With more than 30 partners, we look forward to expanding Tile’s benefits to millions of customers and enabling an experience that helps you keep track of all your important belongings.
We welcome competition, as long as it is fair competition. Unfortunately, given Apple’s well-documented history of using its platform advantage to unfairly limit competition for its products, we’re skeptical. And given our previous history with Apple, we think it’s entirely appropriate for Congress to take a closer look at Apple’s specific business practices for its entry into this category. We welcome the opportunity to discuss these issues before Congress tomorrow.
To avoid complaints like the one Tile will present at the conference, Apple waited to introduce AirTag until it launched the indFind My Network accessory program, designed to allow third-party item trackers to integrate into the indFind My app along with AirTags.
Third-party accessory manufacturers can integrate Find My tracking into their Bluetooth devices, with U1 chip support in the near future. If desired, Tile could create item tracking tags designed to integrate with the indFind My app, but Tile already has its own accessory search network established.
IndFind My accessories can only work with the Find My app, and Tile is unlikely to want to give up its customer base to create a Find My label that only works with Apple devices. Tile believes that only with the release of an article tracker will Apple be able to dominate the market because of its first-hand advantage.
Apple’s irAirTags will be available for order on April 23, with launch on April 30.