Author: Foo Yun Chee
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Apple dismissed criticism on Monday that it had not done enough to open up its closed ecosystem as required by the European Union’s Digital Markets Act, saying it had complied with key legislation.
The DMA lists obligations and prohibitions for Apple, Alphabet’s Google, Amazon, TikTok owner ByteDance, Meta Platforms and Microsoft that the six companies had to comply with on March 7.
Apple has announced a series of changes in recent weeks from allowing app developers to distribute their iPhone apps directly to users instead of through Apple’s App Store to allowing developers to distribute their apps to users in the European Union outside of the App Store.
The company told app developers, business users and competitors at a day-long hearing organized by the European Commission that it had redesigned its systems to comply with the DMA.
“We were primarily driven by making sure we complied with the law. And then secondly, that we did it in a way that was consistent with our values and consistent with the language that we developed with our users over a very long period of time. And we think we achieved that,” Apple attorney Kyle Andeer said at the hearing.
“And I think we’re focused on that from a user perspective. Now, that’s not to say we’re not focused on the developer impact, but I think from our perspective, first of all, we’re going to be watching very carefully what the impact of all these different changes is on the user experience that we provide to our users 15 , 16 years old via iPhone?”
Meta will present its compliance efforts at a separate hearing on Tuesday, Amazon on Wednesday, Alphabet on Thursday, ByteDance on Friday and Microsoft next Tuesday.
Companies that do not comply with the DMA risk investigations that can lead to fines of up to 10% of their global annual turnover.
(This story has been edited to add the omitted apostrophe in the title)
(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Editing by Susan Fenton)