During his visit to Madrid, Tim Cook met with artists, chefs and athletes. In Amsterdam, he visited a chip factory and met with video game designers. Brussels is also known for its creativity, but for Apple it is, first of all, business, and the main appointment of the CEO of the Californian company in the community capital took him to the Berlaymont, the headquarters of the European Commission.
The reason, the entry into force of the Digital Markets law, legislation designed to better control large platforms that will have important consequences for companies like Apple, which are now qualified as “guardians of access” and will be subject to stricter antitrust controls. It will also force it to open up the ecosystem of its most prized product, the iPhone, to competition, so that, for example, it allows competing companies to offer their own app stores.
It’s a brutal change for an ecosystem as closed as Apple’s, but the European Commission reminded its CEO yesterday that it must apply the legislation. “Whether it’s e-wallets, browsers or app stores, consumers using an Apple iPhone should be able to benefit from competitive services from different providers,” Breton said after his meeting with Cook, which ended with a personal and informal detail loaded with meaning: a visit to his particular ‘cable museum’, as his team calls the shelves in his office full of technological fossils, such as an old mp3 player, or artefacts related to their jobs, for example semiconductors, satellite parts or different mobile phone chargers, up to those equipped with a USB-C port.
This wire is where Breton wanted to get to. “Just one, cable tangles are a thing of the past,” Breton tweeted. USB-C is the model chosen for the universal charger that, from 2025, must be included in all phones sold in the EU, and therefore a reminder of its victory over manufacturers. It was a polite way of reminding the CEO of Apple “the strength of the European internal market” (450 million consumers, compared to 330 in the United States) and that it is useless to “resist the rules that come out of Brussels” · them and which, often, define the global standards”, explain European sources.
Apple’s opposition to the original recommendation by manufacturers to use a single charger was one of the factors that led Brussels, ten years later, to propose a regulation that would leave no room for the industry to evade it. This time, the company has chosen to be among the first in the class and “lead by example” by incorporating it early in its latest model, the iPhone 15, as Breton highlighted and praised in the meeting with Cook .
That’s what Brussels wants Apple to do now with the Digital Markets law, which companies have until March 2024 to comply with. “Whether it’s electronic wallets, browsers or app stores, consumers using an Apple iPhone should be able to benefit from competitive services from different providers,” claims Breton. “European legislation encourages innovation without putting security or privacy at risk”, he added, evoking the two aspects mentioned as “risks” by the company, which did not make any assessment of the meeting yesterday.
Apple has submitted allegations that its messaging system, iMessage, is exempt from the obligation to open up to competition, claiming that it does not have enough users in Europe. In addition, it is also obliged to open its platform to third parties so that the consumer can purchase apps in alternative stores to the official one or delete the ones installed by default. Breton and Cook agreed to intensify the work of their respective teams to advance law enforcement. Companies that do not comply risk fines of up to 10% of their turnover.
