Apple says that their iMessage service is insufficiently popular to be designated as a “gatekeeper” under the EU’s new Digital Markets Act (DMA). Microsoft has also taken the same tack with its Bing search engine.
Javier Espinoza for Financial Times:
Brussels’ battle with the two US companies over Apple’s iMessage chat app and Microsoft’s Bing search engine comes ahead of Wednesday’s publication of the first list of services to be regulated by the Digital Markets Act.
The legislation imposes new responsibilities on tech companies, including sharing data, linking to competitors and making their services interoperable with rival apps.
Platforms with an annual turnover of more than €7.5bn, a market cap above €75bn and active monthly users in the EU of 45mn will fall under the rules, though Brussels has some discretion over the designation beyond these metrics.
Apple argued that iMessage did not meet the threshold of user numbers at which the rules applied and therefore should not comply with obligations that include opening the service to rival apps such as Meta’s WhatsApp, said the two people.
Analysts have estimated that iMessage, which is built into every iPhone, iPad and Mac, has as many as 1bn users globally, but Apple has not disclosed any figures for several years. The decision is likely to hinge on how Apple and the EU define the market in which iMessage operates.
Brussels is still deliberating over the inclusion of iMessage and Bing in the final list. The European Commission may open a probe to determine if these services should face the new obligations set out in the DMA.
MacDailyNews Take: With the UK — where Apple’s iMessage is actually used in numbers — no longer a part of the quasi-governmental EU bureaucracy and the majority of the people in EU countries using WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Messenger, etc., it’s entirely possible, if not probable, that Apple falls outside of the EU red tape machine’s latest bout of innovation-stifling overreach.
Those who choose to be led by idiots live idiotically.
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