Apple significantly increased its spending on lobbying in 2022, increasing by 44% compared to 2021, but the company is still spending less than its peers.
A report from July 2022 revealed that Apple spent a record $4.6 million in the first half of 2022, which was $1.5 million higher than 2021. The company’s number of in-house and outside lobbyists has increased by more than 65% since 2015, but its total pool of lobbyists is smaller than competitors.
Now, a report on Monday from CNBC shows that Apple’s total lobbying reached nearly $9.4 million for the entire year of 2022, a record for the company but below Microsoft’s $9.8 million and Google’s $10.9 million.
Meanwhile, among the other Big Tech companies, Amazon topped at $19.7 million, while Meta reached a close second place at $19.2 million. For Amazon, that was a roughly 2% increase in spending compared to 2021 and a 4.6% decrease for Meta.
Apple’s public filing revealed that it lobbied on issues such as antitrust, online privacy, taxes, content moderation, climate change, and others.