DMA Gatekeepers Designated
European Commission (Hacker News):
The European Commission has today designated, for the first time, six gatekeepers - Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, Microsoft - under the Digital Markets Act (DMA). In total, 22 core platform services provided by gatekeepers have been designated. The six gatekeepers will now have six months to ensure full compliance with the DMA obligations for each of their designated core platform services.
[…]
In parallel, the Commission has opened four market investigations to further assess Microsoft’s and Apple’s submissions arguing that, despite meeting the thresholds, some of their core platform services do not qualify as gateways:
- Microsoft: Bing, Edge and Microsoft Advertising
- Apple: iMessage
It does include iOS, the App Store, and Safari.
Benjamin Mayo (Mastodon, MacRumors):
In accordance with the published legislation, to classify as a ‘gatekeeper,’ the service must have more than 45 million monthly active users in the EU.
[…]
There are more than 1 billion iPhones in use worldwide. However, Apple does not publish monthly active user numbers for iMessage publicly, so we can’t know for sure how many users it has in each region. Competitors like WhatsApp are also more dominant in Europe than in the US, where iMessage has higher penetration.
It’s kind of funny that the EU came up with this objective sounding rule to regulate American big tech companies but now a bunch of their services will avoid the regulation.
I bet the next law will just be the anti-FAANG law and give up the pretende of objectivity that GDPR, DSA & DMA tried.
Previously:
- Unraveling the Digital Markets Act
- EU Approves Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act
- Proposed EU DMA: USB-C, Messaging, NFC
- Proposed EU Digital Markets and Services Acts
Update (2024-01-10): Chris Smith (via Hacker News):
Apple’s iMessage isn’t a gatekeeper, so it doesn’t have to support interoperability with, say, Google’s RCS anytime soon. But iOS, the Safari browser, and the App Store are gatekeepers. As such, Apple has six months to make changes to these products according to the DMA rules.
[…]
In other words, iPhones and iPads in the EU will soon support third-party app stores, third-party payment systems, and sideloading.
6 Comments RSS · Twitter · Mastodon
"It’s kind of funny that the EU came up with this objective sounding rule to regulate American big tech companies but now a bunch of their services will avoid the regulation.
If by a bunch he means two then maybe. The thing is, whilst I can see that Bing doesn't have more than 45 million mau I doubt the same is true for Apple.
Of course Apple will fight tooth and nail to stop and/or delay anything that affects them. We saw it with the weird Dating app law in the netherlands, we've seen it with right to repair, we saw it when it came to gimping old iPhones. Apple are perfectly fine with lying if it means they can delay something for a couple of months.
I personally find it har to believe that only 6% of EU citizens use iMessage on a monthly basis, but if Apple manage to prove that then they really aren't a threat to open competition.
"It’s kind of funny that the EU came up with this objective sounding rule to regulate American big tech companies but now a bunch of their services will avoid the regulation."
Yes, because everybody knows TikTok is an American company.
What does Obasanjo want the EU to do? These companies do business in the EU, and they'll be regulated in the EU. If he thinks there's something wrong with the rules the EU came up with, he should just say so, instead of making vague insinuations.
He's mistaking a pro EU law for an anti US law. I personally think it's a very cleverly written piece of legislature that aims to reduce the harm of big corporations on an open market.
For myself I certainly hope iMessage is in there; I mean how could it NOT be when you literally sign in the moment you enter your Apple ID credentials, and even before that if you don't sign in during setup using your phone number? Even the way you're roped in is suspiciously vague: the first indication it's even happening is that you're told you might be charged for the outbound texts the phone sends to register the phone (very charitable, Apple). And sure, WatsApp is popular because of Android, but that doesn't mean there's no value to iPhone users who would rather not install WatsApp, or to the Android users who'd like to reach them. So here's to hoping the EU doesn't let this go on principle, and measures Apple's performance comprehensively based on the REAL numbers, rather than the imaginary ones of people who just happen to use the Messages app to send iMessages.