EU Will Force Apple to Give Developers All Hardware and Software Features
According to an endorsed accord by the European Parliament’s Internal Market Committee, the European Union is pushing ahead with legislation to regulate Apple companies.
The EU governments reached a provisional agreement on Digital Markets Act (DMA).
It was voted in favor of 43, one against, and one abstention. This shows that there is broad agreement among European legislators to regulate large tech companies. Apple will almost certainly be considered a “gatekeeper” by the EU due to its large annual turnover, ownership, and operation on platforms with a large user base, and its “entrenched, durable position” due to how long it has fulfilled these criteria. The regulation will therefore apply to Apple.
The DMA could force Apple to make major changes to the Apple Store and Messages. It also has FaceTime, third-party browsers, and Sir in Europe. It could, for example, be required to allow third-party app stores and sideloading apps to Apple users. This would give developers the ability to interoperate closely with Apple’s services, promote their offerings outside of the App Store, use third-party payment systems, and access Apple data.
The requirement that messaging, voice-calling and video-calling services be interoperable is one of the most recent additions to DMA. According to the interoperability rules, Meta apps such as Messenger and WhatsApp could request to be interoperable with Apple’s iMessage framework. Apple would then have to comply.
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