Apple probably won’t win the war, but the company just won a war. After months of arguing to the Commission that iMessage could not be considered a “gatekeeper,” investigators finally acquiesced. According to information from Bloomberg, messaging will not fall within the legal framework of the DMA, which will come into force in February 2024. The reason for this is that it is not popular in the Old Continent.
As a matter of fact, the commission members responsible for the investigation concluded that the application was used much less than in the USA, especially by professionals. As a reminder, the EU may consider any platform with at least 45 million monthly active users as gatekeeper, a service that could jeopardize competition on the old continent.
iMessage won’t worry about DMA because it’s not popular enough
So this is good news for Apple, which will not have to comply with new legislation on messaging next year. But the Cupertino company is far from out of the woods. Now it is the turn of other services to be analyzed by the Commission to determine whether iOS or Safari is the gatekeeper.
The investigation, which began this summer, has already created a victim in Apple’s ranks. A few weeks ago we learned that a mini revolution was coming to the iPhone. Soon, after years of reign on iOS, the App Store will have to shrink to make room for other app stores. And that probably won’t be the only concession Apple will have to make in the coming months.
The firm also took the lead by announcing that RCS would soon be available in iMessages, again after years of categorically refusing to engage with it in any way. It was later thought that the decision was accelerated by the arrival of the DMA in Europe. While this seems unlikely, since messaging is not subject to regulation after all, it’s not impossible for the manufacturer to back down now.
Source : Bloomberg
