Apple is disputing EU tech rules labeling five of its App Stores as a single core platform service subject to onerous regulation, saying that EU regulators are misinterpreting and misapplying new Digital Markets Act (DMA) legislation that took effect last May in the European bloc.
Reuters:
The company also disputed the characterisation of its operating system iOS as an important gateway for business users to reach end users and the interoperability obligation that goes with that label.
The European Commission made “material factual errors, in concluding that the applicant’s five App Stores are a single core platform service,” Apple said in its plea to the Luxembourg-based General Court, Europe’s second-highest.
The company in its argument to the EU competition enforcer said it operates five App Stores on iPhones, iPads, Mac computers, Apple TVs and Apple Watches, with each designed to distribute apps for a specific operating system and Apple device.
DMA requirements that would affect Apple include allowing third parties to inter-operate with its own services and letting business users promote their offers and conclude contracts with their customers outside its platform.
Apple’s lawsuit also took issue with the Commission’s designation of its messaging service iMessage as a number-independent interpersonal communications service (NIICS) that prompted an EU investigation into whether it should comply with DMA rules.
MacDailyNews Take: When the voracious EU, one of the world’s preeminent specialists in onerous regulation, catches a whiff of cash that it can snatch in order to waste on its various and sundry bureaucracies, fuggetaboutit.
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