

The European Union has determined that Apple Inc. and Google LLC are in breach of the bloc’s DMA antitrust regulation.
The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, published its decision today. Officials have ordered Apple to change a number of iOS features that were found to run afoul of the DMA. The EU’s antitrust findings about Google, in turn, are preliminary, which means the search giant has not yet been instructed to change any business practices.
The DMA, or Digital Markets Act, is an antitrust law that passed in 2022. It’s designed to regulate large tech firms that receive “gatekeeper” status from the European Commission. Apple and Google received that designation about a year after the DMA went into effect.
One of the requirements set forth in the law is that gatekeepers make their platforms interoperable with third-party products. This clause is the focus of the antitrust decision that the EU brought against Apple today. Under the decision, the company must make iPhones more interoperable with third-party connected devices and apps.
The antitrust order covers nine “connectivity features” in iOS. The list includes capabilities that consumers can use to display iPhone notifications on a smartwatch and establish peer-to-peer Wi-Fi connections between mobile devices. The iPhone’s near field communication chip, which allows users to make in-store payments, is also a focus of the antitrust decision.
Apple will be required to make the features on the list more accessible to device manufactures and app developers. Additionally, the iPhone maker has been ordered to streamline the process through which companies apply for access to those features. It must now review interoperability requests under a “more predictable timeline,” as well as provide prompt updates to applicants during the review.
The company pushed back against the EU’s regulatory action in a statement. “Today’s decisions wrap us in red tape, slowing down Apple’s ability to innovate for users in Europe and forcing us to give away our new features for free to companies who don’t have to play by the same rules,” it said in a statement. “It’s bad for our products and for our European users. We will continue to work with the European Commission to help them understand our concerns on behalf of our users.”
In a separate decision, the EU today tentatively found that Google has breached the DMA. Officials focused on two parts of the company’s business: its search engine and the Google Play app store.
Under the DMA, a tech giant with gatekeeper status can’t give its own products an edge in its search service. The EU believes Google failed to comply with that requirement. According to antitrust officials, several of the company’s services including its shopping and hotel booking tools appear above competing offerings in Google Search results.
EU regulators also took issue with the company’s practices in the mobile market.
According to the European Commission, the fees that Google applies to app sales in Google Play are excessive. Regulators believe that the restrictions the company places on steering breach the DMA as well. Steering is the practice whereby developers ask customers to purchase in-app items such as subscriptions outside Google Play.
“Today’s announcement by the European Commission pushes for more changes to Google Search, Android and Play that will hurt European businesses and consumers, hinder innovation, weaken security, and degrade product quality,” Oliver Bethell, Google’s director of competition, wrote in a blog post responding to the EU’s preliminary findings.
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