In September last year, an investigation was launched which followed the decision of the European executives. Apple’s operating system iOS, the Apple App Store and it’s browser Safari were designated gatekeepers last year.
EU antitrust regulators have designated the operating system for Apple iPads as a gatekeeper under the bloc’s landmark tech rules. This is because of its importance to business users, the European Commission said on Monday.
22 services owned by Apple, Alphabet’s Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta Platforms and TikTok owner ByteDance have been labelled as gatekeepers which control access to their platforms under the Digital Markets Act which came into force this year.
An investigation was launched in September last year, following the decision of the European executive. Apple’s operating system iOS, the Apple App Store and it’s browser Safari were designated gatekeepers last year.
In a statement, EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager, “Our market investigation showed that despite not meeting the thresholds, iPadOS constitutes an important gateway on which many companies rely to reach their customers.” According to the commission, the business user numbers of Apple exceeded the quantitative threshold by eleven times. However, the end user numbers of Apple were close to the threshold which were predicted to increase real soon in the near future. According to reports, both end users and business users are locked into iPadOS. This is because iPadOS has a large ecosystem.
The tech giant has six months altogether to agree with the rules or standards set by DMA. According to reports, Apple said that the company would “continue to constructively engage with the European Commission to comply with the DMA across all designated services”.
It is to be noted that if a company violates DMA standards, the company has to have severe consequences. DMA breaches can cost companies fines as much as 10% of their annual global turnover.
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