Report from EU Today
In Brief – Italy’s competition authority has announced an investigation into whether Apple is complying with interoperability requirements of Article 6 the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), marking the national regulator’s first probe under the landmark law. The case focuses on Apple’s iOS and iPadOS operating systems and whether competing consumer cloud services providers receive access to hardware and software features equivalent to Apple’s iCloud service, such as cloud backup, device synchronization, and file management, which could limit the ability of cloud service competitors to compete within Apple’s ecosystem. The investigation itself will not determine whether Apple violated the DMA. Instead, the Italian authority will forward its findings to the European Commission, which will decide whether further enforcement action is warranted.
Context – When the EU created their twin regulatory regimes for digital platforms in 2022, they established a funding mechanism for the European Commission’s enforcement of the Digital Services Act but not for the DMA. However, national competition authorities may supplement the DMA efforts of Brussels. While the European Commission is the sole enforcer, member state regulators state can gather evidence and conduct preliminary inquiries. Italy’s probe is the first major effort to do so. The DMA’s interoperability requirement is an especially difficult problem for Apple. The core user proposition for their very popular platforms is that their “walled garden” provides a better and safer user experience. That walled garden model used by a “gatekeeper” is basically not compliant with the law. More than two years ago the Commission told the company how to give peripherals competitors, such as smart watches and headphones, full access to iPhone capabilities. Apple continues to strenuously object, arguing the rules harm user experience and threatens user privacy. They are withholding Siri AI from the EU arguing that DMA interoperability demands would expose users to potentially unsafe third-party AI applications.