The EU has been investigating Apple, Meta, and other tech giants for compliance issues
Apple and the EU must follow EU Directives on Digital Markets Act (Invited Brief Report on Apple’s Failure to Conform with the DMA)
“We are not convinced that the solutions by Alphabet, Apple and Meta respect their obligations for a fairer and more open digital space for European citizens and businesses,” EU Commissioner Thierry Breton said in a statement. It is possible that gatekeepers could face heavy fines if the investigation concludes that there is lack of full compliance with the DMA.
Additionally, the EU regulator is also looking into the fee structure Apple announced for distributing apps outside of the App Store, as well as whether Amazon is self-preferencing its own products on its store. The Commission has also announced that Meta has been given an additional six months to make Messenger interoperable with other messaging services.
The six major tech companies had to start complying with the rules earlier this month. These include having to give customers the option of changing default apps and uninstalling the gatekeeper’s pre-installed applications, a ban on ranking a gatekeeper’s first-party services higher than rivals, and allowing third-party app stores.
The announcement follows fierce criticism of how Apple in particular is complying with the Digital Markets Act. Although the company is allowing alternative app stores on iOS as required by the new rules, it’s doing so with a new fee structure that its critics claim will dissuade developers from distributing apps outside of Apple’s App Store. Spotify called Apple’s compliance “a complete and total farce” while Epic CEO Tim Sweeney called the changes “a new instance of Malicious Compliance.”
Meta’s “pay or consent model” has also been the subject of complaints from various EU watchdogs. The EU has a new paid tier for Facebook that costs 99.99 a month, and allows you to use it without ads. The commission is worried about the choice that Meta is offering and wants to make sure there is a way to get users to consent to having their data collected if they don’t pay. Meta said last week that it would give up the monthly price of ad-free access in exchange for being listened to by regulators.
Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s competition chief, said that Apple limits developers trying to link from its App Store to their own websites would be a focus of a formal investigation.
The EU and the US have competition officials who cite Apple as a focal point. The EU announcement on Monday follows a lawsuit filed by the US Department of Justice last week that claimed the smartphone maker had established an iPhone monopoly that was suppressing competition and harming consumers.
The lawsuit cited four internal Apple emails that, the DOJ claimed, illustrate how executives knowingly restrict users and developers in unfair ways. In one exchange from 2010, Apple cofounder Steve Jobs and an unnamed Apple executive discussed how a new ad for Amazon’s Kindle gave the impression that it is easy to switch from iPhone to Android. “Not fun to watch,” the executive wrote.
