At Apple, we’ve at all times centered on creating know-how that empowers folks and enriches their lives. We design our merchandise to be intuitive and easy to make use of, to work seamlessly collectively, and to guard folks’s privateness and safety. Since we launched the App Retailer in 2008, we’ve additionally labored with builders to create probably the most vibrant, secure, and profitable digital marketplaces on this planet.
Hundreds of thousands of individuals in Europe select Apple merchandise as a result of they love and belief them. Builders select them to achieve customers globally and construct thriving companies. It’s a mannequin that works — in Europe and all over the world.
However the Digital Markets Act (DMA) is forcing us to make some regarding modifications to how we design and ship Apple merchandise to our customers in Europe.
What Is the Digital Markets Act?
The Digital Markets Act is a regulation the European Union launched in 2022 to reshape how sure know-how corporations design their merchandise. The DMA features a lengthy record of guidelines, however the best way these guidelines are carried out seems to be very totally different from firm to firm.
For Apple, the DMA is impacting many elements of our EU customers’ expertise on our merchandise — from how they obtain apps and make app funds, to how their Apple merchandise work collectively.
Over the previous few months, the European Fee — which is answerable for the DMA — has requested for extra suggestions from corporations and EU residents in regards to the regulation’s results. So we needed to replace Apple customers within the EU on the modifications they’ve began to see, and what they will count on sooner or later.
The DMA’s Impacts on Apple Customers within the EU
Function Delays
The DMA requires Apple to make sure options work on non-Apple merchandise and apps earlier than we will share them with our customers. Sadly, that requires a variety of engineering work, and it’s induced us to delay some new options within the EU:
- Reside Translation with AirPods makes use of Apple Intelligence to let Apple customers talk throughout languages. Bringing a complicated characteristic like this to different units creates challenges that take time to unravel. For instance, we designed Reside Translation in order that our customers’ conversations keep non-public — they’re processed on system and are by no means accessible to Apple — and our groups are doing further engineering work to ensure they gained’t be uncovered to different corporations or builders both.
- iPhone Mirroring lets our customers see and work together with their iPhone from their Mac, to allow them to seamlessly test their notifications, or drag and drop images between units. Our groups nonetheless haven’t discovered a safe solution to convey this characteristic to non-Apple units with out placing all the information on a person’s iPhone in danger. And in consequence, we now have not been in a position to convey the characteristic to the EU.
- We’ve additionally needed to delay helpful options like Visited Locations and Most well-liked Routes on Maps, which retailer location information on system so it’s solely accessible to the person. Up to now, our groups haven’t discovered a solution to share these capabilities with different builders with out exposing our customers’ places — one thing we’re not keen to do.
We’ve instructed modifications to those options that may defend our customers’ information, however to date, the European Fee has rejected our proposals. And in response to the European Fee, underneath the DMA, it’s unlawful for us to share these options with Apple customers till we convey them to different corporations’ merchandise. If we shared them any sooner, we’d be fined and probably pressured to cease delivery our merchandise within the EU.
We wish our customers in Europe to take pleasure in the identical improvements similtaneously everybody else, and we’re preventing to make that attainable — even when the DMA slows us down. However the DMA means the record of delayed options within the EU will in all probability get longer. And our EU customers’ expertise on Apple merchandise will fall additional behind.
A Riskier, Much less Intuitive App Expertise
We’ve at all times run the App Retailer to be a secure and trusted market for our customers, and to create an unimaginable enterprise alternative for builders. As a result of DMA, our EU customers are experiencing the next impacts:
- Extra dangers when downloading apps and making funds: The DMA requires Apple to permit sideloading, different app marketplaces, and different cost methods — even when they don’t meet the identical excessive privateness and safety requirements because the App Retailer. On different cell platforms, customers face scams unfold by way of pretend banking apps, malware disguised as video games, and third-party cost methods that overcharge them with no solution to get their a refund. The DMA’s necessities make it extra possible our EU customers shall be uncovered to comparable dangers.
- A much less intuitive expertise: As a substitute of 1 trusted place to get apps, EU customers now face a number of marketplaces, every with their very own design, guidelines, and overview requirements. On different cell platforms, that results in dangerous look-alike apps that slip by way of with fewer checks, and marketplaces the place customers don’t know the place to show if one thing goes flawed. Apple customers within the EU at the moment are extra prone to face those self same dangers. And it’ll solely turn into tougher for our EU customers to know the place an app got here from, who’s answerable for it, and what protections apply if issues come up.
- New publicity to dangerous apps: For the primary time, pornography apps can be found on iPhone from different marketplaces — apps we’ve by no means allowed on the App Retailer due to the dangers they create, particularly for kids. That features Scorching Tub, a pornography app that was introduced by AltStore earlier this yr. The DMA has additionally introduced playing apps to iPhone in areas the place they’re prohibited by regulation.
We constructed the App Retailer to be a central, trusted place for our customers the place each app is reviewed, each developer follows the identical guidelines, and oldsters have instruments to guard their kids. We’re nonetheless preventing to guard that high quality expertise our customers count on, however the DMA has pressured modifications to that mannequin. And that’s creating extra complexity and extra dangers for our EU customers.
New Privateness and Safety Threats
The DMA additionally lets different corporations request entry to person information and core applied sciences of Apple merchandise. Apple is required to fulfill nearly each request, even when they create critical dangers for our customers.
Up to now, corporations have submitted requests for a few of the most delicate information on a person’s iPhone. Probably the most regarding embrace:
- The entire content material of a person’s notifications: This information contains the content material of a person’s messages, emails, medical alerts, and some other notifications a person receives. And it could reveal information to different corporations that at present, even Apple can’t entry.
- The total historical past of Wi-Fi networks a person has joined: Wi-Fi historical past can reveal delicate details about a person’s location and actions. For example, corporations can use it to trace whether or not you’ve visited a sure hospital, lodge, fertility clinic, or courthouse.
Giant corporations proceed to submit new requests to gather much more information — placing our EU customers at a lot larger danger of surveillance and monitoring. Our groups have defined these dangers to the European Fee, however to date, they haven’t accepted privateness and safety issues as legitimate causes to show a request down.
Is the DMA Attaining Its Objectives?
Regulators claimed the DMA would promote competitors and provides European shoppers extra decisions. However the regulation will not be residing as much as these guarantees. In reality, it’s having a few of the reverse results:
- Fewer decisions: When options are delayed or unavailable, EU customers don’t get the identical choices as customers in the remainder of the world. They lose the selection to make use of Apple’s newest applied sciences, and their units fall additional behind.
- Much less differentiation: By forcing Apple to construct options and applied sciences for non-Apple merchandise, the DMA is making the choices accessible to European shoppers extra comparable. For example, the modifications to app marketplaces are making iOS look extra like Android — and that reduces alternative.
- Unfair competitors: The DMA’s guidelines solely apply to Apple, though Samsung is the smartphone market chief in Europe, and Chinese language corporations are rising quick. Apple has led the best way in constructing a singular, modern ecosystem that others have copied — to the advantage of customers in every single place. However as a substitute of rewarding that innovation, the DMA singles Apple out whereas leaving our rivals free to proceed as they at all times have.
Below the DMA, the European Fee’s interpretation of the foundations is consistently altering. And that makes it practically not possible for corporations to know the way to comply.
When there are disagreements in regards to the DMA’s necessities, corporations must make the European Fee’s modifications earlier than the courts weigh in — which may takes months or years — even when that does irreversible hurt to customers. And the penalties for failing to conform are completely arbitrary. They’re utilized inconsistently, they usually’re designed to punish corporations as a substitute of selling competitors.
Over time, it’s turn into clear that the DMA isn’t serving to markets. It’s making it tougher to do enterprise in Europe.
Apple’s Perspective on the DMA
It’s been greater than a yr because the Digital Markets Act was carried out. Over that point, it’s turn into clear that the DMA is resulting in a worse expertise for Apple customers within the EU. It’s exposing them to new dangers, and disrupting the straightforward, seamless manner their Apple merchandise work collectively. And as new applied sciences come out, our European customers’ Apple merchandise will solely fall additional behind.
The DMA additionally isn’t serving to European markets. As a substitute of competing by innovating, already profitable corporations are twisting the regulation to swimsuit their very own agendas — to gather extra information from EU residents, or to get Apple’s know-how free of charge.
Regardless of our issues with the DMA, groups throughout Apple are spending hundreds of hours to convey new options to the European Union whereas assembly the regulation’s necessities. But it surely’s turn into clear that we will’t resolve each drawback the DMA creates.
That’s why we’re urging regulators to take a more in-depth take a look at how the regulation is affecting the EU residents who use Apple merchandise each day. We consider our customers in Europe deserve the very best expertise on our know-how, on the identical customary we offer in the remainder of the world — and that’s what we’ll hold preventing to ship.
