Apple will soon announce policy changes to conform to the Digital Markets Act in Europe, with an impending implementation deadline...
Who would've thought? This isn’t going to fly with the EU.
Article 5.3 of the Digital Markets Act (DMA): "The gatekeeper shall not prevent business users from offering the same products or services to end users through third-party online intermediation services or through their own direct online sales channel at prices or conditions that are different from those offered through the online intermediation services of the gatekeeper."
Friendly reminder that you can sideload apps without jailbreaking or paying for a dev account using TrollStore, which utilises core trust bugs to bypass/spoof some app validation keys, on a iPhone XR or newer on iOS 14.0 up to 16.6.1. (ANY version for iPhone X and older)
Who would’ve thought? This isn’t going to fly with the EU.
Article 5.3 of the Digital Markets Act (DMA): “The gatekeeper shall not prevent business users from offering the same products or services to end users through third-party online intermediation services or through their own direct online sales channel at prices or conditions that are different from those offered through the online intermediation services of the gatekeeper.”
Apple has an annual legal budget of approximately infinity dollars. I assure you they are aware of this and they believe they are in compliance, even if just barely.
If challenged, they will have no problem fighting it — they have nearly as much cash on hand as the entire EU budget.
I hope the EU challenges this, and I hope the EU wins, but Apple isn’t going to be surprised by whatever happens.
The fine would be approximately 10% of Apple's total revenue and the fine increases by 10% every violoation so I doubt that Apple can not accept the regulations.
What if I told you one of those two can make new laws?
In one afternoon the Commission+Parliament can change the basis of whatever case Apple wants to fight. And they are up against Vestager - she makes multinational software companies bend the knee twice before lunch.
Yup. If the only penalty is a fine, and that fine doesn’t scale to the business’ profits? A profitable enough business could simply factor in the fines as a cost of doing business.
Imagine you could make $1000 and only get fined $200 after the fact. No extra penalties. Just a flat $200 fine for every time you violate it. So as long as you expect to be able to top that $200 fine, a business will elect to just pay the fine and continue doing the illegal thing.
There's the letter and there's the spirit of the law. Even if Apple has found a brilliant loophole the courts can just say well it's technically true but you're still breaking the law nonetheless, lawyer budget be damned.
The EU court is a Roman court, not an Anglo Saxon court. The spirit of the law is what matters, not the technicalities.
Second, the EU can change the laws that create the outcome they don’t like. By the people, for the people. Apple will play within the EU’s rules or Apple won’t play in the EU.
Thats a fun thought exercise, but I'm not holding my breath for courts to not give massive buisnesses the benefit of every doubt, let alone enforce rules beyone what's explicitly written.