Brussels will stick its nose into Apple’s affairs. After the company disabled certain features of its OS, supposedly to comply with European rules, regulators are investigating.
It was only a matter of time. After Apple’s much-criticized “compliance” with the Digital Markets Act (DMA), the European Commission has decided to stick its nose into the company’s affairs to check whether the iPhone manufacturer is complying with the new directive European Union for opening up to competition.
Apple is playing with fire
The investigation recently opened by member state commissioners particularly concerns the fate that Apple has reserved for Progressive Web Apps (PWA) in the latest version of its mobile operating system, iOS 17.4. Citing “complex security and privacy issues», Apple has in fact deactivated the possibility of pinning these applications to the home screen of iPhones and iPads in Europe, transforming them into vulgar shortcuts to web pages.
A technical decision which does not seem entirely to the taste of the EU, since the Commission explained to the Financial Times that it was in the process of “e focus particularly on the case of PWAs” and to have “sent information requests to Apple and application developers who could provide us with useful information to better understand the situation“.
These web applications being a popular way to escape the commission that Apple takes on its App Store (and the new tax imposed on developers in Europe), it is a safe bet that the European Commission is not going to let Apple quietly maneuver as it pleases, the DMA being precisely designed to break the monopolistic rules that “access controllers» as Apple have been able to implement over the years. The Commission also specifies that it is in the process of assessing the compliance solutions of “tall access controllers, including Apple“.
The first investigation in a long line?
This is not exactly the first time that the iPhone manufacturer has attracted the discreet wrath of Brussels. Already at the end of January 2024, Thierry Breton, European Commissioner for the Internal Market, explained that he was ready to “take strong measures» in the event of non-compliance with the DMA by platforms, in the middle of a huge controversy concerning the implementation of alternative App Stores on iOS.
Source : Financial Times
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