20 years ago Europe had a thriving phone industry. Now it's just gone, and they want to blame everyone else for this, and fail to reflect on why it happened.
Except this has nothing to do with some monopoly on the smartphone market, but with Apple not allowing application developers to enable their users to vote with their wallets on payment methods. From the press release:
> Under the DMA, app developers distributing their apps via Apple's App Store should be able to inform customers, free of charge, of alternative offers outside the App Store, steer them to those offers and allow them to make purchases.
>
> The Commission found that Apple fails to comply with this obligation. Due to a number of restrictions imposed by Apple, app developers cannot fully benefit from the advantages of alternative distribution channels outside the App Store. Similarly, consumers cannot fully benefit from alternative and cheaper offers as Apple prevents app developers from directly informing consumers of such offers. The company has failed to demonstrate that these restrictions are objectively necessary and proportionate.
This has nothing to do with smartphones specifically, it applies equally well to anything in the AppStore ecosystem.
1. Not about any monopoly (in fact the word "monopoly" does not appear in the press release at all).
2. Nothing like McDonalds, whose business model is completely different from an app store's.
3. Not about Apple can do to consumers who aren't in the Apple ecosystem but about what it can do to developers who wish to sell their applications and services for Apple devices.
If you really insist on making an analogy that involves McDonalds: that's like arguing that McDonalds should not be allowed to prevent Coca-Cola from telling Coca-Cola customers that they can buy Coca-Cola in places other than McDonalds. Which, yeah, they're not allowed to.
> If you really insist on making an analogy that involves McDonalds: that's like arguing that McDonalds should not be allowed to prevent Coca-Cola from telling Coca-Cola customers that they can buy Coca-Cola in places other than McDonalds. Which, yeah, they're not allowed to.
Neither the App Stores or McDonalds have any control over what you do outside of them. That's your problem, individually and collectively.
> [the App Stores does not] any control over what you do outside of them
Well, we are talking about Apple's App Store, not just an App Store, and in that case, it's Apple. So, Apple wants to exert control over what you as an app developer do outside of the App Store. That's the problem. The fact that you think that's not happening means you know it's wrong.
They did the equivalent of saying to Coca Cola if you discover a customer via the App Store then we get a cut of it, which is a very normal and common arrangement, even if disagreeable.
No, they did the equivalent of saying to Coca-Cola if you discover a customer via the App Store then you cannot tell them they can buy Coca-Cola from outside the App Store, too, a decidedly anti-competitive practice that also happens to be illegal in just about every European country, even without EU intervention.
> Do you expect Amazon marketplace sellers to be able to link to their items being on ebay or shopify from the actual Amazon website?
From the Amazon website? No. From the products they're selling? Yes, absolutely, and lots of them do, I get one of those business cards with "Find us on Amazon/Ebay/Shopify/whatever" in the box with almost every purchase.
Same with apps. I obviously don't expect them to link to items from other stores from their App Store description pages. But from their application? Yes, I totally expect that.
That's how marketplaces everywhere work, including IRL. Go to any farmer's market and most sellers will give you a business card with their website or phone number so you can also order from them directly, or from their Amazon/Shopify/whatever page.
Edit: not to mention that this is 2025, the distinction between "within the app" and "via your website" is pretty meaningless in a bunch of cases.
A major detail you are ignoring here is Apple are the merchant of sale for everything via the App Store (Google at least were not for the Play Store at launch, I do not know if this has changed) so your comparisons do not make sense. The native app universe on iOS is closest to being an Apple run Costco.
I would be very surprised if a fulfilled by Amazon order for a third party seller contained any extra promo materials in the box for similar reasons.
> not to mention that this is 2025, the distinction between "within the app" and "via your website" is pretty meaningless in a bunch of cases.
To you. Not to your end users, and most definitely not to the platform owners.
It's not my comparison. It's yours, and just as meaningless as your previous one about McDonald's.
This one's no better, either, as Costco's terms for its wholesale suppliers aren't anywhere close to Apple's, even though the agreement is structured more or less similarly -- but sure, let's entertain it: Costco's terms for its suppliers aren't public, but at least the ones that are on public record (via the SEC: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1940372/000149315222... ) make no restrictions on the choice of payment processors for digital products, which is what Apple got fined for.
There is a restriction on promotional material enclosed with the product (as in it needs prior written approval from Costco, not as in it's completely banned) and an explicit mention that it applies to digital products as well. But there is no requirement that digital products sold by Costco as merchant of sale for the supplier enable purchases only via Costco.
The root of yours is that you keep trying to make this about McDonalds, Amazon, Ebay, Costco or some other contraption instead of the App Store, which is what this is actually is about. Not that the argument matters, because the exact moment when you leave Costco has no bearing on the fact that Costco doesn't restrict what payment processor are used in the digital goods that it sells.
But even if it did, Apple's ToS clearly distinguish between the App Store and the licensed application, and between interactions in the App Store and interactions from within the application. You may not want to make the same distinction in order to be right about some imaginary system that you're thinking about, but this is about the actual App Store, not whatever iMcCostco-Amazon marketplace you've dreamed up.
All the metaphors I've used are yours, Ivan. Why would they anger me? I'm not the one who came up with them :-).
What you've pointed out has no bearing whatsoever on what's being discussed here. This isn't about some stretched out definition of "payment system" that applies to those services that happen to have both iOS and Android client applications. It's strictly about what works in applications available on Apple's App Store. For many of them your point 4 doesn't even apply because they don't have an Android variant in the first place.
Let me know when you'd like to go back to discussing the actual issue from the linked article. Bye!
You're making a lot of noise to distract from the fact it is entirely possible to use other payment mechanisms for digital goods to consume in apps, and that from comparison to stores for physical goods we established that promoting other means for purchasing from the app on a given platform is an unreasonable expectation, exactly like expecting Coca Cola served in McDonalds to be allowed to be labelled "available for 1 euro less at Burger King!"
Arguably their entire position with Meta is even more unreasonable than your positions here. No wonder the EU struggles in business.
And with that miss Ivan has forgotten that it was he himself that brought up his own disastrous Coca Cola metaphor, cause of so much angst and frustration.
In a confused daze he goes to a store, buys a bottle of Coca Cola, and heads to a nearby McDonalds where he opens it and drinks it, wondering why all these suckers in McDonalds do not think to buy their soda elsewhere. If only Coca Cola could label the soda in McDonalds to let people know of their options! As the staff approach him to ask him to leave he wonders why the world does so consistently fail to match his preconceptions, and if only that evil Apple had not insisted on using their payments system then he would have been able to scam thousands of those foolish American idiots and go to live on Cyprus far away from such concerns as a metaphorical demon in the form of "Costco".
Thrown out on to the street he resorts to the tried and tested European strategy of claiming victimhood "Why are you persecuting me? It is the same soda! Why can I not drink it here?" but it is to no avail. Clearly the world, immune to reason, has not finished with his punishment, but OP has; he's done.
You are perfectly free to have a website where you list your prices at one price point, and then have them different in the app because of the 30% cut, and that's very normal practice, even if everyone does complain about it.
The whole point of the DMA is clarifying that from the point of view of the European Union, operating a digital market on a platform is not actually like going to a McDonalds.
There is no argument to be made by analogy here. The DMA always was clear regarding what constitutes a digital market and what the obligations of the companies operating them would be. If Apple is unhappy about that, they are free to stop operating the App Store in the EU.
The EU would have a lot more sympathy for this if there were any non trivial digital markets that originated in the EU, with the closest being Spotify, which they somehow claim is not a gatekeeper in the music industry.
They aren't being a decent regulatory body on this one, given they have not reflected on why they are in this position, nor are they being fair with applying their rules. (The same comment can be made about the ludicrous variation in applying the GDPR).
> The EU would have a lot more sympathy for this if there were any non trivial digital markets that originated in the EU
Why should that be a prerequisite?
The EU is sovereign. They are free to do whatever they want with their law. Let's not forget we are talking about the second consumer market in the world. There will be a lot more space for homegrown solutions or companies ready to comply if the foreign companies currently profiting decide to leave.
> There will be a lot more space for homegrown solutions or companies ready to comply if the foreign companies currently profiting decide to leave.
The core of what I'm trying to communicate is this is backwards.
If you took the Europeans out of Apple and Google they'd never have been able to build the iPhone or Android, or their associated stores. (And you could say this about other regions where the staff came from too). Why did those Europeans that helped the US leave the EU to do so? Because the companies in the US rewarded them as they recognized the explosive potential as the market developed.
The underlying problem is EU regulation is shortsighted, and always fighting the previous battle when it's been lost. They had every opportunity to lead this from the start. I namedropped GetJar earlier, but there was Jamster/Jamba and various services which the phone companies would subcontract to to run their own store fronts. I know of several aborted Android app stores and subscription services from the 2010 era, including those from Switzerland, Belgium and a certain large French company, and there are almost certainly more.
The time to address this was 15 years ago. Now their only viable path forward is to effectively fork Android and encourage adoption of their fork, much as the Chinese have. Their problem is they have to leave things like WhatsApp available, or their citizens will go nuts, and they will resist rewarding anyone involved with the technical side of the work, so it won't happen. They just want to punish the americans for having had the foresight that led to their success.
As an example, just look at how the europeans have failed to come up with something equivalent to WhatsApp, Signal or even Telegram. The closest is matrix and element, but again without the associated rewards for working on them they just aren't going to get up to the standards people expect, and so they languish with absolute idealists and those forced to use them.
> Their problem is they have to leave things like WhatsApp available, or their citizens will go nuts
WhatsApp would be displaced in a matter of days if not hours if made unavailable. You are far overestimating the amount of disruption a closure would provoke.
> They just want to punish the americans for having had the foresight that led to their success.
This is not about punishment. The DMA is about setting ground rules for a level playing field in the digital market space. It is at its heart a law about competition.
Europe wants the American companies to stop abusing their dominant positions and the closed markets they built. This is a prerequisite to a competitive market as it's basically impossible to foster competition when a few players have spent a decade entrenching themselves and building barriers to entry.
Thankfully, there are no rules which say American companies should reap unlimited benefits from their market manipulations and the overall laissez-faire attitude of the American regulator.
> As an example, just look at how the europeans have failed to come up with something equivalent to WhatsApp, Signal or even Telegram.
All of them have ready to use Asian competitors which would be more than happy to work with European regulators if American companies won't.
It's admittedly popular with a certain demographic of would be app developers that either think the fees are what is stopping them being successful (they're not, although admittedly they are anachronistically high at this point) or they want to scam people.
There's no evidence that it is popular beyond that, especially among people that choose to use iOS.
This metaphor doesn't quite work because McDonalds aren't a marketplace. But the closest I can think of is if McDonalds sold the best hamburger boxes that people want to use at home, but then added a mechanism that only lets you put a burger in that box if whoever made that burger bribed MacDonalds, regardless of what's good for you as the burger consumer.
McDonalds are not responsible for what people do outside of McDonalds. If the entire potential customerbase decides to show up at McDonalds and exclusively eat there for five years bankrupting everyone else and McDonalds had behaved legally throughout then how are they the problem?
As I mentioned elsewhere, just look at the idiotic way Europe embraced WhatsApp. They genuinely believed it was free, and a huge proportion of users still don't understand it's attached to Meta and Facebook. They are so susceptible to product dumping by tech companies because they are astoundingly cheap and short sighted, and they will not pay for an alternative when the "free" version exists.
Except that there are hundreds of other food options while there are only two realistic options for smartphones, neither of which is cooking at home. The tight control has benefits - Apple’s App Store is much safer than letting your parents install stuff they find on the internet - but there’s a real downside which needs regulation to balance.
So we want to punish people that choose that option?
Europe could easily have had a homegrown alternative to the Play Store on Android. In fact at one time it had several, only the users had no interest at all, and this was before Google went through their phase of locking things down more.
The vision for what became the Play Store was born from ex GetJar, and I was told by several Googlers at the time that they were amazed by the lack of serious competing stores that people were running. Many threatened to do so (including my employer) but it was, from the business side, pure bluffing.
In China the android market does not rely on the Play Store, so we have definite proof it can be done.
> Europe could easily have had a homegrown alternative to the Play Store on Android. In fact at one time it had several, only the users had no interest at all, and this was before Google went through their phase of locking things down more.
So why should users not have the option anymore because years ago the existing options were worse than Google's?
Should you be forbidden to buy an iPhone because you used until Androids until now and passed on iPhones?
The problem is European users are too cheap, and European regulators too short sighted. It makes them hilariously prone to product dumping, where WhatsApp is "free" of course, except it isn't. They then mass adopt the "free" option and act surprised pikachu when it's not actually free.
What you are advocating is forcing a market option to change what it is, when a critical mass of their customers have chosen it precisely because of what it is.
> The problem is European users are too cheap, and European regulators too short sighted.
This seems to be a common issue for all countries, the US included.
(See the Chrome spin-off talks currently taking place.)
> What you are advocating is forcing a market option to change what it is, when a critical mass of their customers have chosen it precisely because of what it is.
Incorrect, users have chosen it for what it precisely was. After a certain size that choice does not exist anymore and the option is also very different compared to the initial choice (between the different app stores available at the time) made by users.
You're also mistaken in thinking that the hardware should automatically imply a specific software. This is not the case and we're going to slowly move to a place where the hardware is independent of the software and vice-versa for smartphones.
> This seems to be a common issue for all countries, the US included.
The US is much more resistant to it, which is a major factor in iOS share being higher and WhatsApp being an almost complete non event.
Similarly those same users bought into the iOS option entirely because of the better privacy enabled by not being "free" in the price sense. In a very real sense Apple are the regulators of their platform in that they define and execute the policies. People buy into it because they like that aspect of things, and prefer the Apple regulations to those created by their governments. The EU want to override the regulations of the platform, except being short sighted they don't appreciate the effects of their suggestions, and so they're being played particularly by Meta.
> This is not the case and we're going to slowly move to a place where the hardware is independent of the software and vice-versa for smartphones.
People have been saying this from the start, but if anything it's now diverging faster than before. If you launch a service today and have no native app presence you will not be regarded as credible in the marketplace.
> The US is much more resistant to it, which is a major factor in iOS share being higher and WhatsApp being an almost complete non event.
iOS has a larger market share in the US because iPhones are a status symbol in America whereas Europeans couldn't care less.
Which in turn makes iMessages market share larger in the US than in Europe.
iPhone market share is also pretty stagnant since 2023 in the US and way down worldwide since then.
If anything, I would consider the US WhatsApp user base numbers (~64M users) to be much more impressive than the iMessage user counts (~130 iPhone owners) because WhatsApp is not installed by default.
> People buy into it because they like that aspect of things, and prefer the Apple regulations to those created by their governments.
This very much has yet to be proven since "those (policies) created by their governments" has not been made possible by Apple yet. If Apple is so confident in their software quality, this additional competition should not be an issue for them.
> If you launch a service today and have no native app presence you will not be regarded as credible in the marketplace.
I meant that you'll buy the hardware but will then have the choice to install different operating systems and app market places. The same way computers have worked for the last 30 years.
> iPhones are a status symbol in America whereas Europeans couldn't care less.
Europeans absolutely could, they're just too tight fisted to actually spend money on things like protecting privacy which is a major part of the whole problem.
They are perfectly fine spending money on luxury cars.
> Europeans absolutely could, they're just too tight fisted to actually spend money on things like protecting privacy which is a major part of the whole problem.
Users in the US don't care about protecting their privacy either.
> Users in the US don't care about protecting their privacy either.
They absolutely do, you just like to dismiss it as being about status.
It was similar when RIM were on top in north america. The status came because of their association with business because they provided secure messaging. High status people care about privacy and security.
> Users have no understanding of security. High status or not.
Upper middle class americans absolutely do, or they don't stay that way for very long. The US has a culture of a lot more personal responsibility, and a lot less trust of the government to handle it.
> Why is it that iPhone users prefer GMail over iCloud Mail?
They already had it from before people realized it was a bait and switch. Work users will almost certainly be using the Exchange integration, and private messaging is done via iMessage.
> So you mean to say that they made the same mistake that the supposed European users did with the app stores?
Absolutely, and they learned from this, as did Apple, hence the rules they came up with to stop Google and Facebook from doing what they were trying to do, which the EU remain oblivious to, supposedly.
This is why new Google products and services are basically doomed to fail in the US market, almost regardless of how good they are.
> Yet they are on the same very public and absolutely no private or secure social networks (Facebook, TikTok, Instagram) as the rest of the world?
You missed a big one: Snapchat; popular mainly in the US purely because of the privacy angle. Those others you mention are used for deliberate sharing.
No, Sony Ericsson was way more successful than the attempts to revise history like to portray.
The vision of what to do with the more powerful technology was also better than Nokia, though still not as good as Apple. The whole direction Nokia kept dragging Series 60 in was a dead end, almost from the very start.
Even had they run with a wild pivot to Android it would have required the strategic vision to also build an Android app store, which would have upset the various European telcos that made a few extra euros that way.
