Apple Set to Challenge Latest EU Crackdown on Big Tech Dominance

[darknessblade]

Summary

APPLE is set to challenge the European Union’s (EU) fresh crackdown on Big Tech’s dominance in the first of what is expected to be several appeals against the Digital Markets Act (DMA).

 

Quotes

Quote

APPLE is set to challenge the European Union’s (EU) fresh crackdown on Big Tech’s dominance in the first of what is expected to be several appeals against the Digital Markets Act (DMA).

The company will dispute the EU regulator’s decision to put all of the App Store into the bloc’s new digital antitrust list. It will also argue that its iMessage service should not be subject to closer scrutiny from regulators, sources said.

 

My thoughts

Why does apple even think they have a Fighting chance to persuade the EU on reversing their decision of barring apple from "forcing" users to use Imessage over alternatives? 

 

Just like Microsoft had a Monopoly on Internet explorer back in 2010, when they where forced to show a "browserchoice window" for users within the EU.

Apple should not complain they are held to the same type of laws other Monopolies.

They themselves made the willing choice of NOT releasing MacOS, IOS and therefor Imessage to other devices.

 

 

Sources

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-10/apple-to-appeal-digital-markets-act-over-app-store-at-eu-court

https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/companies-markets/apple-set-challenge-latest-eu-crackdown-big-tech-dominance-sources

https://ec.europa.eu/competition/digital_markets_act/cases/202344/DMA_100027_197.pdf

https://www.ft.com/content/ec2ec699-a91c-4389-b1a9-ae06dca836d5

https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/11/08/apple-admits-third-party-app-stores-in-europe-are-inevitable

 

 

https://ec.europa.eu/competition/consumers/citizen_summary/en.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrowserChoice.eu

[HenrySalayne]

5 minutes ago, darknessblade said:

Why does apple even think they have a Fighting chance to persuade the EU on reversing their decision of barring apple from "forcing" users to use Imessage over alternatives? 

Quote

This notice comes in a section of the 10-K which describes risks to the company and its expected profitability.

This is more broadly against opening up their closed ecosystem to the competition and losing billions because they can't milk their customers as they did before.

[TempestCatto]

I read DMA as DMCA and thought they were about to take over the music world or something. Dyslexia at it again

[Needfuldoer]

31 minutes ago, TempestCatto said:

I read DMA as DMCA and thought they were about to take over the music world or something. Dyslexia at it again

Didn't they do that about 20 years ago?

[CarlBar]

10 hours ago, darknessblade said:

Why does apple even think they have a Fighting chance to persuade the EU on reversing their decision of barring apple from "forcing" users to use Imessage over alternatives? 

 

I have to assume they're either trying to stall for some reason or someone high up doesn't understand the legal side and is trying to approach this problem like they're in the US.

[williamcll]

Apple should stop selling in EU and we'll see who has the last laugh

 

[HenrySalayne]

18 minutes ago, williamcll said:

Apple should stop selling in EU and we'll see who has the last laugh

Excellent advice! Before Apple loses 1 or 2 % profit margin, they rather pull out of Europe and just leave their 95 billion USD revenue for their competitors. That will show them!

 

"Apple will stop selling in Europe" is the most toothless threat of all times.

 

[Mark Kaine]

4 hours ago, williamcll said:

Apple should stop selling in EU and we'll see who has the last laugh

 

would be funny if it ended up like that... doesn't follow regulations  = no more license to sell anything  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

[Mark Kaine]

3 hours ago, HenrySalayne said:

"Apple will stop selling in Europe" is the most toothless threat of all times

it's what possibly actually awaits them tho!

 

read the law, that's the endgame 

[williamcll]

13 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

it's what possibly actually awaits them tho!

 

read the law, that's the endgame 

Nokia is back babeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

[captain_to_fire]

On 11/12/2023 at 2:12 AM, darknessblade said:

Why does apple even think they have a Fighting chance to persuade the EU on reversing their decision of barring apple from "forcing" users to use Imessage over alternatives? 

They can easily remove iMessage and FaceTime in EU iPhones and iPads. I mean that's Apple's response when British legislators demanded encryption backdoors.

 

4 hours ago, HenrySalayne said:

Excellent advice! Before Apple loses 1 or 2 % profit margin, they rather pull out of Europe and just leave their 95 billion USD revenue for their competitors. That will show them!

Knowing the strong cult following of Apple, people will simply buy from the US and have it shipped to their EU address. I mean that's what happened with the first iPhone and with the iPhone 3G.

 

 

[Obioban]

I have 3 thoughts, with varying levels of agreeing/disagreeing with Apple

 

1) Competing app stores should be allowed for sure. Completely agree this is a monopoly that should be broken/competition allowed. I think it's fair to include some warning text when installing an alternate app store that you won't be as secure (as you won't), but getting apps from alternate sources should 100% be allowed. Basically, the setup on the Mac today is pretty ideal IMO. An app store exists, but nothing about it is required to be used. That said, I don't think this will be a universal win for customers. E.g. how long until Facebook pulls their app from Apple's app store and forces you to used a 3rd party app store, so they can install a version of Facebook on your phone that'll tank your battery and share everything you do with Facebook? Lots of 80+ year olds using Facebook that'll just blindly follow their instructions on how to install apps from a 3rd party app store so they can see pictures of their grand kids, with no idea of the ramifications of their actions.

 

2) iMessage doesn't have significant usage share in Europe, so don't think there's any argument that that's a monopoly that needs to be broken. Forcing intercommunication between various messaging apps feels like it'll be the end of legit encryption. This isn't just an iMessage issue-- Signal, etc, too. So, against regulation there-- especially as the EU is constantly trying to force back doors into encrypted messages.

 

3) Forcing different browser engines could easily/likely end up in a Chrome/Chromium monopoly, which is NOT a good thing. Right now, only Safari legitimately stands between the only web browsing engine being controlled by the world's largest advertising company, that also likes to harvest user data. The moment using webkit isn't required, Google can force anyone that wants to use their apps (has to be 90%+ of the world population) to get a Chromium powered browser. This would be, IMO, a very bad thing. Instead of a web being built on standards, we'd rapidly progress to a web based on google's desires. This already happens to some extent, but it can only go so far when any functionality based on that can only reach Chromium based customers.

[captain_to_fire]

20 minutes ago, Obioban said:

The moment using webkit isn't required, Google can force anyone that wants to use their apps (has to be 90%+ of the world population) to get a Chromium powered browser.

I think that would be much harder to do since web standards are meant to be "open". The only reason I can think of is due to web browsers with their own rendering engines differing which HTML standards they support. This is why I can use Google services on any browser despite Google's warnings that Gmail works better in Chrome, or as to why LTT won't load properly on internet explorer since it's an outdated browser with lackluster HTML standard support even back when it's still supported. Not to mention the fact that Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Mozilla are members of W3C and WHATWG.

 

[Obioban]

46 minutes ago, captain_to_fire said:

I think that would be much harder to do since web standards are meant to be "open". The only reason I can think of is due to web browsers with their own rendering engines differing which HTML standards they support. This is why I can use Google services on any browser despite Google's warnings that Gmail works better in Chrome, or as to why LTT won't load properly on internet explorer since it's an outdated browser with lackluster HTML standard support even back when it's still supported. Not to mention the fact that Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Mozilla are members of W3C and WHATWG.

 

Sure, but even today there's sites that require chrome to function properly. There are standards, but not all sites are only built to standards.

[Mark Kaine]

15 hours ago, williamcll said:

Nokia is back babeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

only if Siemens comes back too!