Apple has only 30 days to comply with EU DMA rules The European Commission (EC) this week released the full text of its decision that found Apple in violation of its digital competition rules, known as the Digital Markets Act (DMA). The ruling [PDF] makes clear that Apple's App Store rules still fall short of DMA requirements. If it doesn't comply within the next 30 days, it …
Not going well for Apple at the moment. Decades of illegal actions and legal disobedience all being dealt with at the same time in a crescendo of smack-downs across the world. Last week a US judge ordered Apple to name the executive responsible for it's ignoring of court orders, and suddenly Fortnite is allowed back on IOS, and all legal issues between Epic and Apple are settled.
Couldn't happen to a nicer company.
If you have got to this point in the lawsuit and NOT spent millions already on the contigency of you losing the case and what will be required to implement the court's order very rapidly.... then I'm sorry, but for someone the size of Apple with the lawyers they have - it's verging on wilful non-compliance to not be able to put this in place almost immediately, let alone inside 30 days.
If Apple try to wheedle their way out of this on technicalites or claim they couldn't do it in time... we should throw the book at them.
That depends on whether or not the infringing party is Apple (US) or Apple (some tiny European office that barely exists that sends all its funds to the US as part of a "profit-sharing" deal to avoid paying EU tax).
Because if the later, they'll just say "We don't have the funds for that" and then close shop and open another.
Apple has to provide all the infrastructure for free downloads and let others make all the profits? Because if they can't charge anything, and these days basically all apps cost zero to download with all payments made "in app" later, they would be operating their app store for free for every company that chooses to set up their own payments system.
At some point Apple would be better off just dropping the App Store from the EU and let them use third party app stores for everything. Yeah I know they would never do that because it would damage the user experience and piss off the EU from malicious compliance, but it sure would be a FAFO moment for the EU especially if Google followed suit.
So let's say Apple says:
"OK new policy, it costs x per year plus y per download for App Store hosting, with those fees being refundable based on App Store revenue" [so the free riders have to pay but the ones who are making Apple money don't]
Does that get by the EU? Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't, maybe it depends on how the EU feels about the exact level of 'x' and 'y'. No one can say for sure, they may say that's fine or they might say that's a backdoor way of trying to force companies to keep their app store billing with Apple. And therein lies the problem - Apple can't know anything they do will 100% for sure meet the EU's mark because there is no written law for them to follow. Only a "spirit of a law".
Charging for hosting also kills off the truly free apps. Those still exist, and some are quite useful (they make their money on ads or its just a small developer who does it for the love of the hobby not to make money) but Apple couldn't carve out an exception for those but still charge for apps that are free for download but require payment to the app provider for in-app purchases. I'm pretty positive the EU would see THAT as a violation of their rules.
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