Apple statement: The Digital Markets Act’s impacts on EU users

Apple Inc.:
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At Apple, we’ve always focused on creating technology that empowers people and enriches their lives. We design our products to be intuitive and simple to use, to work seamlessly together, and to protect people’s privacy and security. Since we launched the App Store in 2008, we’ve also worked with developers to create one of the most vibrant, safe, and successful digital marketplaces in the world.
Millions of people in Europe choose Apple products because they love and trust them. Developers choose them to reach users globally and build thriving businesses. It’s a model that works — in Europe and around the world.
But the Digital Markets Act (DMA) is forcing us to make some concerning changes to how we design and deliver Apple products to our users in Europe.
What Is the Digital Markets Act?
The Digital Markets Act is a regulation the European Union introduced in 2022 to reshape how certain technology companies design their products. The DMA includes a long list of rules, but the way those rules are implemented looks very different from company to company.
For Apple, the DMA is impacting many parts of our EU users’ experience on our products — from how they download apps and make app payments, to how their Apple products work together.
Over the past few months, the European Commission — which is responsible for the DMA — has asked for more feedback from companies and EU citizens about the law’s effects. So we wanted to update Apple users in the EU on the changes they’ve started to see, and what they can expect in the future.
The DMA’s Impacts on Apple Users in the EU
Feature Delays
The DMA requires Apple to make certain features work on non-Apple products and apps before we can share them with our users. Unfortunately, that requires a lot of engineering work, and it’s caused us to delay some new features in the EU:
• Live Translation with AirPods uses Apple Intelligence to let Apple users communicate across languages. Bringing a sophisticated feature like this to other devices creates challenges that take time to solve. For example, we designed Live Translation so that our users’ conversations stay private — they’re processed on device and are never accessible to Apple — and our teams are doing additional engineering work to make sure they won’t be exposed to other companies or developers either.
• iPhone Mirroring lets our users see and interact with their iPhone from their Mac, so they can seamlessly check their notifications, or drag and drop photos between devices. Our teams still have not found a secure way to bring this feature to non-Apple devices without putting all the data on a user’s iPhone at risk. And as a result, we have not been able to bring the feature to the EU.
• We’ve also had to delay useful features like Visited Places and Preferred Routes on Maps, which store location data on device so it’s only accessible to the user. So far, our teams haven’t found a way to share these capabilities with other developers without exposing our users’ locations — something we are not willing to do.
We’ve suggested changes to these features that would protect our users’ data, but so far, the European Commission has rejected our proposals. And according to the European Commission, under the DMA, it’s illegal for us to share these features with Apple users until we bring them to other companies’ products. If we shared them any sooner, we’d be fined and potentially forced to stop shipping our products in the EU.
We want our users in Europe to enjoy the same innovations at the same time as everyone else, and we’re fighting to make that possible — even when the DMA slows us down. But the DMA means the list of delayed features in the EU will probably get longer. And our EU users’ experience on Apple products will fall further behind.
A Riskier, Less Intuitive App Experience
We’ve always run the App Store to be a safe and trusted marketplace for our users, and to create an incredible business opportunity for developers. Due to the DMA, our EU users are experiencing the following impacts:
• More risks when downloading apps and making payments: The DMA requires Apple to allow sideloading, other app marketplaces, and alternative payment systems — even if they don’t meet the same high privacy and security standards as the App Store. On other mobile platforms, users face scams spread through fake banking apps, malware disguised as games, and third-party payment systems that overcharge them with no way to get their money back. The DMA’s requirements make it more likely our EU users will be exposed to similar risks.
• A less intuitive experience: Instead of one trusted place to get apps, EU users now face multiple marketplaces, each with their own design, rules, and review standards. On other mobile platforms, that leads to harmful look-alike apps that slip through with fewer checks, and marketplaces where users don’t know where to turn if something goes wrong. Apple users in the EU are now more likely to face those same risks. And it’ll only become harder for our EU users to know where an app came from, who’s responsible for it, and what protections apply if problems arise.
• New exposure to harmful apps: For the first time, pornography apps are available on iPhone from other marketplaces — apps we’ve never allowed on the App Store because of the risks they create, especially for children. That includes Hot Tub, a pornography app that was announced by AltStore earlier this year. The DMA has also brought gambling apps to iPhone in regions where they are prohibited by law.
We built the App Store to be a central, trusted place for our users where every app is reviewed, every developer follows the same rules, and parents have tools to protect their children. We’re still fighting to protect that quality experience our users expect, but the DMA has forced changes to that model. And that’s creating more complexity and more risks for our EU users.
New Privacy and Security Threats
The DMA also lets other companies request access to user data and core technologies of Apple products. Apple is required to meet almost every request, even if they create serious risks for our users.
So far, companies have submitted requests for some of the most sensitive data on a user’s iPhone. The most concerning include:
• The complete content of a user’s notifications: This data includes the content of a user’s messages, emails, medical alerts, and any other notifications a user receives. And it would reveal data to other companies that currently, even Apple can’t access.
• The full history of Wi-Fi networks a user has joined: Wi-Fi history can reveal sensitive information about a user’s location and activities. For instance, companies can use it to track whether you’ve visited a certain hospital, hotel, fertility clinic, or courthouse.
Large companies continue to submit new requests to collect even more data — putting our EU users at much higher risk of surveillance and tracking. Our teams have explained these risks to the European Commission, but so far, they haven’t accepted privacy and security concerns as valid reasons to turn a request down.
Is the DMA Achieving Its Goals?
Regulators claimed the DMA would promote competition and give European consumers more choices. But the law is not living up to those promises. In fact, it’s having some of the opposite effects:
• Fewer choices: When features are delayed or unavailable, EU users don’t get the same options as users in the rest of the world. They lose the choice to use Apple’s latest technologies, and their devices fall further behind.
• Less differentiation: By forcing Apple to build features and technologies for non-Apple products, the DMA is making the options available to European consumers more similar. For instance, the changes to app marketplaces are making iOS look more like Android — and that reduces choice.
• Unfair competition: The DMA’s rules only apply to Apple, even though Samsung is the smartphone market leader in Europe, and Chinese companies are growing fast. Apple has led the way in building a unique, innovative ecosystem that others have copied — to the benefit of users everywhere. But instead of rewarding that innovation, the DMA singles Apple out while leaving our competitors free to continue as they always have.
Under the DMA, the European Commission’s interpretation of the rules is constantly changing. And that makes it nearly impossible for companies to know how to comply.
When there are disagreements about the DMA’s requirements, companies have to make the European Commission’s changes before the courts weigh in — which can takes months or years — even if that does irreversible harm to users. And the penalties for failing to comply are totally arbitrary. They’re applied unevenly, and they’re designed to punish companies instead of promoting competition.
Over time, it’s become clear that the DMA isn’t helping markets. It’s making it harder to do business in Europe.
Apple’s Perspective on the DMA
It’s been more than a year since the Digital Markets Act was implemented. Over that time, it’s become clear that the DMA is leading to a worse experience for Apple users in the EU. It’s exposing them to new risks, and disrupting the simple, seamless way their Apple products work together. And as new technologies come out, our European users’ Apple products will only fall further behind.
The DMA also isn’t helping European markets. Instead of competing by innovating, already successful companies are twisting the law to suit their own agendas — to collect more data from EU citizens, or to get Apple’s technology for free.
Despite our concerns with the DMA, teams across Apple are spending thousands of hours to bring new features to the European Union while meeting the law’s requirements. But it’s become clear that we can’t solve every problem the DMA creates.
That’s why we’re urging regulators to take a closer look at how the law is affecting the EU citizens who use Apple products every day. We believe our users in Europe deserve the best experience on our technology, at the same standard we provide in the rest of the world — and that’s what we’ll keep fighting to deliver.

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MacDailyNews Take: Again, as we wrote long ago:
[W]e usually prefer the government to be hands-off wherever possible, Laissez-faire… Regulations are static and the marketplace is fluid, so extensive regulations can have unintended, unforeseen results down the road. – MacDailyNews, June 9, 2006

The European Union arose because the Europeans couldn’t compete on their own with the rest of the world, so they each lined up to surrender their national sovereignty, unique cultures, and dignity for an undemocratic, opaque, wasteful, bloated, bureaucratic quasi-governmental blob – and, even with the EU’s thumbs all over the scale, they still can’t compete. — MacDailyNews, March 4, 2024

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