European Union: Competition Commissioner meets the bosses of Apple, Alphabet and Qualcomm

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said on Friday she had met with the chief executives of Apple, Alphabet and Qualcomm to discuss regulation and compliance with competition policy, in messages published on the social network

Last week, Margrethe Vestager’s communications advisor announced that these talks would mainly focus on European digital regulations, in particular digital markets legislation (DMA) as well as competition policy.

Margrethe Vestager posted updates on all three meetings.

With Apple’s Tim Cook, she said she discussed, among other things, the company’s obligation to allow distribution of its apps outside of its own AppStore, as well as ongoing competition cases, such as the one concerning its music streaming service Apple Music.

With Sundar Pichai, the director of Alphabet and Google, she discussed, among other things, the design of selection screens, self-referencing in relation to the DMA, as well as the Google adtech affair linked to competition .

Under the DMA, companies with more than 45 million monthly active users and a market capitalization of €75 billion are considered “gatekeepers” and categorized as such.

For example, they must ensure that their messaging applications interact with their rivals, or let users decide which applications to pre-install on their devices.

Margrethe Vestager did not give details of what had been discussed with Cristiano Amon, CEO of Qualcomm.

(Reporting by Piotr Lipinski; French version Stéphanie Hamel, editing by Kate Entringer)