Apple: digital law DMA of the EU has been abolished

It is widely known that Apple has a problem with the Digital Markets Act (DMA) of the European Union, with which technology groups are to be regulated down to detail. Most recently, Greg Joswiak, the worldwide marketing boss of the iPhone Group, expressed extremely critical: the company no longer wants to accept in Apple’s products that the EU takes “the magic” to the EU. Now Apple even calls for the full abolition of the DMA for the first time, it says in a statement to the EU Commission, which is available to the dpa news agency. The DMA does not promote competition, but “only new weaknesses”.

Supposedly “fatal consequences” by the DMA

In a statement by the iPhone Group to the EU Commission in the course of the “DMA review”, with which the regulatory procedure is to be checked, it says that the EU-wide law has “fatal consequences” and must be canceled. “The European Commission used the DMA to create a more complicated, less trustworthy practice that brings our users completely new dangers,” the company writes in the 25 -page statement.

The commission “opened fraudsters and malware door” and, thanks to the forced opening for alternative app marketplaces and other new sales channels, “brought new categories of apps to the iPhone-such as pornography-that Apple has never allowed and the children expose new risks”. However, it has so far been extremely difficult to bring such alternatives to the app store onto the devices. Large shops such as the Epic Games Store have comparatively low installation numbers.

Apple: Samsung is not regulated

Apple also sees a lack of justice in regulatory practice. In contrast to Apple, Samsung was not classified as a so -called gatekeeper, although the South Korean company in Europe is the market leader in smartphones. In addition, the EU Commission focused almost exclusively on Apple in its enforcement measures. The iPhone group was targeted five times by the Commission-“more than all other companies together”.

Decisions against Apple were made to the “much faster”. “The examinations of other gatekeepers (Apple thinks Google, note of the editor here, for example) are only slow, while the commission is driving its campaign to redesign the iPhone.” In the penalty of 500 million euros that the EU Commission had imposed in April, Apple sees an “unprecedented fine due to alleged non-compliance with a legal provision”. According to the EU Commission, Apple has prevented app developers preventing users to provide users on alternative and possibly cheaper offers outside the Apple App Store.

Functions that are not unlocked in the EU

After all, Apple writes that the possible punishments have prompted the group not to introduce certain iPhone functions in the EU area at first. This lasts the live translation function of the new AirPods 3. When opening the system for headphones from other manufacturers, it must be avoided that they can evaluate the content of the conversations.

Apple teams are currently working on technical solutions to ensure that content cannot be passed on to other companies or developers. As long as this is not possible, the live translation function should not be released. Other features such as iPhone Mirroring, which Apple had recently improved, are also not available for EU citizens because Apple apparently fears that the third-party providers have to give for compulsory remote control access to the iPhone.