Apple Maps And Apple Ads Highlighted By EU, European Commission Opens New Investigations On DMA Violations

JAKARTA European regulations are again approaching Apple. The European Commission (EC) officially opened an investigation into two Apple services at once, namely Apple Maps and Apple Ads, after the company reported that it both met the gatekeeper service threshold in the Digital Markets Act (DMA) rules.

This move adds to the length of the tug-of-war between Apple and European regulators. If previously Apple was forced to open doors for third-party app stores and replace Lightning connectors to USB-C, now the spotlight is moving to digital map and advertising services that are getting more and more influential.

Apple reported itself the status of Apple Maps and Apple Ads to the official website of DMA, according to legal obligations for companies that reach certain thresholds in the number of users and businesses that take advantage of their services. After the report came in, the European Commission had 45 days to determine whether the two services really met the GTeeper criteria.

If declared fulfilled, Apple will be given a six-month deadline to adjust services to comply with DMA rules. Even so, Apple is submitting an exception request for both.

What's Gatekeeper?

According to the European Parliament, a service is considered a gatekeeper' if it meets two major aspects: providing core platform service (CPS) such as browsers, social services, or messaging... and has a very large user reach. The standard is at least 45 million monthly active users in the EU, have more than 10 thousand annual business users, and are above the 75 billion euros or turnover of 7.5 billion euros per year.

Apple was previously involved in various similar cases. The most famous issue is the App Store policy which is being sued for high costs and anti-steering rules that are considered to limit developers. This pressure makes Apple finally allow third-party app stores to be present in the iPhone ecosystem for European users.

Safari has also been in question. In 2023, the European Commission assessed that Apple provided special treatment to the innate browser, while Apple denied stating that Safari actually consisted of three different entities that did not meet the definition of a GTeeper.

Apple Pay was also the target of the investigation until finally Apple allowed the use of NFC iPhone for third-party digital wallet banks and applications. Apple Music's music service was also hit by its turn, following protests from Spotify, which resulted in a fine of nearly $2 billion.

On various occasions, Apple insists that DMA is detrimental to users and only benefits other big tech companies, especially competitors like Spotify.

The new investigation puts Apple on the increasingly stringent European regulatory stage, with pressure that could change the design direction, features, to the company's core service business model. Apple's "EU feud seems to be long, and whatever the results of this investigation have the potential to re-map the strength of global tech players again.