The European Comission has concluded an investigation that began last September to decide whether iPadOSthe tablet operating system Manzanais a “central platform service” and therefore must be subject to the rules established for these cases by the Digital Markets Law, DMA for its acronym in English. The answer has finally been affirmativeso the iPad must go through the same changes that the iPhone since the DMA came into force and Apple is given a period of 6 months to apply them.
In a statement published this Monday, the European Commission states that “iPadOS constitutes an important entrance door for business users to reach end users and that Apple enjoys a long-standing and entrenched position on iPadOS”.
Apple is one of six technology companies designated by Europe as “access gatekeepers”, but among the services of the company that Due to their relevance, they are subject to a series of rules to protect user rights and promote competition, there was no iPadOS. Yes the App Store, the Safari browser and the iPhone operating system, iOSalong with 19 other services from Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and ByteDance.
Under the DMA, which went into effect on March 7, iPadOS will now have to comply with the rules allowing users in Europe download apps from outside of Apple's App Store, uninstall preinstalled apps on iPads, and be able to select default services, such as browsers, in the operating system. If Apple fails to comply with DMA rules, the company could face fines of up to 10 percent of your global income or up to 20 percent in case of recidivism.
The Commission notes that “the number of Apple business users exceeded the quantitative threshold eleven times (to be considered a core platform service), while the number of end users was close to the threshold and is expected to increase in the near future.” He also reproaches that “end users are tied to iPadOS”, also business users, and that Apple discourages switching to other operating systems for tablets.
In the case of iOS, the changes required by the DMA arrived with the version 17.4 last March. Apple has not yet commented on this decision, although it is expected that the iPad follow the same path as the iPhone and the changes arrive within the deadline established by the Commission.
The Digital Markets Law, according to the European Commission, aims to “guarantee competitive and fair markets in the digital sector”, so it regulates the access gatekeepers. These are the “large digital platforms that provide an important gateway between business users and consumers, whose position may give them the power to create a bottleneck in the digital economy”.