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 one of the vital vibrant, protected, and profitable digital marketplaces on this planet.
Tens of millions 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 adjustments 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 checklist of guidelines, however the way in which these guidelines are carried out appears 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 accountable for the DMA — has requested for extra suggestions from corporations and EU residents concerning the legislation’s results. So we wished to replace Apple customers within the EU on the adjustments they’ve began to see, and what they’ll count on sooner or later.
The DMA’s Impacts on Apple Customers within the EU
Characteristic Delays
The DMA requires Apple to make sure options work on non-Apple merchandise and apps earlier than we are able to share them with our customers. Sadly, that requires a number of engineering work, and it’s prompted us to delay some new options within the EU:
- Dwell 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 resolve. For instance, we designed Dwell Translation in order that our customers’ conversations keep personal — 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 examine their notifications, or drag and drop photographs between units. Our groups nonetheless haven’t discovered a safe approach to deliver this characteristic to non-Apple units with out placing all the info on a consumer’s iPhone in danger. And consequently, we have now not been in a position to deliver 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 knowledge on system so it’s solely accessible to the consumer. To date, our groups haven’t discovered a approach to share these capabilities with different builders with out exposing our customers’ places — one thing we’re not prepared to do.
We’ve urged adjustments to those options that might defend our customers’ knowledge, however up to now, the European Fee has rejected our proposals. And in keeping with the European Fee, underneath the DMA, it’s unlawful for us to share these options with Apple customers till we deliver them to different corporations’ merchandise. If we shared them any sooner, we’d be fined and probably pressured to cease transport 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 checklist 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 protected and trusted market for our customers, and to create an unbelievable enterprise alternative for builders. Because of the 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 fee techniques — 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 means of pretend banking apps, malware disguised as video games, and third-party fee techniques that overcharge them with no approach to get their a refund. The DMA’s necessities make it extra probably our EU customers will probably be uncovered to related dangers.
- A much less intuitive expertise: As an alternative of 1 trusted place to get apps, EU customers now face a number of marketplaces, every with their very own design, guidelines, and assessment requirements. On different cell platforms, that results in dangerous look-alike apps that slip by means 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 develop into tougher for our EU customers to know the place an app got here from, who’s accountable 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 youngsters. That features Sizzling 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 legislation.
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 youngsters. We’re nonetheless preventing to guard that high quality expertise our customers count on, however the DMA has pressured adjustments 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 consumer knowledge and core applied sciences of Apple merchandise. Apple is required to fulfill nearly each request, even when they create severe dangers for our customers.
To date, corporations have submitted requests for a few of the most delicate knowledge on a consumer’s iPhone. Probably the most regarding embody:
- The entire content material of a consumer’s notifications: This knowledge contains the content material of a consumer’s messages, emails, medical alerts, and some other notifications a consumer receives. And it could reveal knowledge to different corporations that at present, even Apple can’t entry.
- The total historical past of Wi-Fi networks a consumer has joined: Wi-Fi historical past can reveal delicate details about a consumer’s location and actions. As an example, corporations can use it to trace whether or not you’ve visited a sure hospital, lodge, fertility clinic, or courthouse.
Massive corporations proceed to submit new requests to gather much more knowledge — placing our EU customers at a lot increased danger of surveillance and monitoring. Our groups have defined these dangers to the European Fee, however up to now, they haven’t accepted privateness and safety considerations as legitimate causes to show a request down.
Is the DMA Reaching Its Targets?
Regulators claimed the DMA would promote competitors and provides European shoppers extra decisions. However the legislation just isn’t residing as much as these guarantees. The truth is, 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 obtainable to European shoppers extra related. As an example, the adjustments to app marketplaces are making iOS look extra like Android — and that reduces selection.
- Unfair competitors: The DMA’s guidelines solely apply to Apple, regardless that Samsung is the smartphone market chief in Europe, and Chinese language corporations are rising quick. Apple has led the way in which in constructing a novel, progressive ecosystem that others have copied — to the good thing about customers all over the 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.
Underneath the DMA, the European Fee’s interpretation of the foundations is consistently altering. And that makes it practically unimaginable for corporations to know the best way to comply.
When there are disagreements concerning the DMA’s necessities, corporations must make the European Fee’s adjustments earlier than the courts weigh in — which might 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, and so they’re designed to punish corporations as a substitute of selling competitors.
Over time, it’s develop 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 for the reason that Digital Markets Act was carried out. Over that point, it’s develop 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 means 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 an alternative of competing by innovating, already profitable corporations are twisting the legislation to swimsuit their very own agendas — to gather extra knowledge from EU residents, or to get Apple’s know-how without cost.
Regardless of our considerations with the DMA, groups throughout Apple are spending 1000’s of hours to deliver new options to the European Union whereas assembly the legislation’s necessities. But it surely’s develop into clear that we are able to’t resolve each downside the DMA creates.
That’s why we’re urging regulators to take a more in-depth have a look at how the legislation is affecting the EU residents who use Apple merchandise on daily basis. We consider our customers in Europe deserve the very best expertise on our know-how, on the identical commonplace we offer in the remainder of the world — and that’s what we’ll hold preventing to ship.
