While the Digital Markets Act came into force on May 2, 2023, some players are still trying to escape it. Among them, Apple and Microsoft, who believe that some of their services are not important enough to fall under the yoke of European regulation.
Can you be one of the largest companies in the world and escape anti-competitive laws? Apple and Microsoft very much hope so. Indeed, the two companies recently argued to European authorities that iMessage and Bing were not services important enough to be affected by the legislation on digital markets (the famous DMA).
A story of threshold
As a reminder, the Digital Markets Acts wants to force “gatekeepers” to put an end to self-preferential policies, limit data sharing between services and make their platforms interoperable with competing services. iMessage should therefore be compatible with other instant messengers like WhatsApp, and Bing would no longer be able to promote its own services like Bing Maps or Bing Chat.
But it is over the very definition of access controllers that Apple and Microsoft are fighting. According to them, their services do not meet the condition sine qua non to be affected by the DMA: have at least 45 million monthly end users.
To find out, Brussels therefore sent a questionnaire to users of these services as well as to competing companies to gather their vision of things, reveals the press agency Reuters. The European Competition Authority also asked professional customers whether certain functionalities of the tools concerned were essential for the proper functioning of their services. This additional route could allow the EU to qualify Apple and Microsoft as gatekeepers.
Verdict in 5 months
Targeted users and businesses have one week to respond to the survey sent by the European Commission. Then a period of 5 months will begin where the European authorities will decide the fate reserved for Microsoft and Apple. The latter could therefore join Amazon, Facebook, Twitter/X.com and other platforms under the inquisitive eye of the European Commission.
Source : Reuters
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