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Apple fights EU’s Digital Markets Act in landmark antitrust challenge

MacDailyNews

Oct 21

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Apple challenged the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) in the most significant legal test yet of the bloc’s antitrust rules for Big Tech.

The company’s lawyer, Daniel Beard, argued before the General Court in Luxembourg on Tuesday that the Digital Markets Act “imposes hugely onerous and intrusive burdens” incompatible with Apple’s rights in the EU market.

Enacted in 2023, the DMA has provoked criticism from President Donald Trump and complicated EU-US trade negotiations.

Samuel Stolton for Bloomberg News:
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Apple — seen as the biggest renegade against the EU’s crackdown — challenged the law on three fronts: EU obligations to make rival hardware work with its iPhone, the regulator’s decision to drag the hugely-profitable App Store under the rules, and a decision to probe whether iMessage should have faced the rules, which it later escaped.

Apple’s comprehensive challenge to the Digital Markets Act raises three key arguments:

First, it contends that interoperability mandates—forcing iPhone services to integrate seamlessly with competitors’ devices like earbuds or smartwatches—threaten user privacy, security, and intellectual property rights.

Second, Apple argues its App Store should be exempt from the rules, as it does not qualify as a single service under the DMA’s definition. The company is separately contesting a €500 million ($581 million) fine imposed for alleged App Store violations.

Third, Apple disputes the EU’s probe into whether iMessage should fall under the DMA, asserting it is not a revenue-generating service.

Stolton continues:
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EU commission lawyer Paul-John Loewenthal hit back against the tech giant’s claims, saying Apple’s “absolute control” over the iPhone has allowed it to generate “supernormal profits in complimentary markets where its competitors are handicapped and cannot compete with it on an equal footing.”
“Only Apple has the keys to that walled garden,” Loewenthal told the court. “It decides who gets it and who can offer their products and services to iPhone users.”
“And through such control, Apple has locked in more than a third of European smartphone users,” he added.

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MacDailyNews Take: Smartphone buyers have other choices. They are not forced to buy iPhones. Apple dos not have a monopoly in smartphones in Europe or anywhere else.

Mobile Operating System Market Share Europe (Sept. 2025)
• Android: 62.69%
• iOS: 35.77%

The European Union is an overregulated, slow-motion train wreck. The single biggest reason why the EU doesn’t innovate because of onerous, stifling EU red tape.

The European Union arose because the Europeans couldn’t compete on their own with the rest of the world, so they each lined up to surrender their national sovereignty, unique cultures, and dignity for an undemocratic, opaque, wasteful, bloated, bureaucratic quasi-governmental blob – and, even with the EU’s thumbs all over the scale, they still can’t compete. — MacDailyNews, March 4, 2024

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