Data protection & innovation "endangered": Apple's chief annoyed by EU
Apple's Policy Boss Kyle Andeer criticizes the Digital Markets Act, stating Apple is severely frustrated by the EU's approach.
Apple and the EU Commission will likely no longer be friends regarding the DMA.
(Image: daily_creativity / Shutterstock.com)
Kyle Andeer has a lot of experience dealing with regulatory authorities. After all, he worked for ten years in antitrust enforcement at both the US Department of Justice and the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Andeer has now been with Apple for 16 years, most recently as Chief Compliance Officer and VP of Corporate Law. And in this role, he also deals directly with the EU Commission, which wants to regulate Apple much more strictly through the Digital Markets Act (DMA) than in the decades before.
According to Andeer's assessment, the dialogue on this remains dysfunctional. In an interview with the Handelsblatt, he now said multiple times how frustrated Apple is. In the context of the Commission's interim report on DMA implementation, there was no course correction, which Apple had apparently requested. “We had hoped that the review would provide an occasion for sober reflection for the EU,” said Andeer. Instead, only a kind of “self-therapeutic defense” emerged.
Meta and Wi-Fi History
In the interview, Apple's regulatory chief used further strong words, even though he is known as a thoughtful individual. While the DMA has not yet had any negative impact on Apple's EU revenue, the radicality that Andeer perceives is causing something else: Apple sees itself as being hindered in terms of data protection and innovation. As an example, Andeer cited the mandate for interoperability, which Apple considers problematic in the DMA's form.
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As an example, he mentioned the topic of Wi-Fi. Here, Andeer believes, Facebook's parent company Meta could be allowed to grab the iOS Wi-Fi login history: for example, from “hospitals, hotels, or airports.” Apple is being forced by the EU to share the list. “This is a concern for us and it is a vulnerability that threatens privacy.” Apple claims to have provided the EU with numerous examples of such DMA-induced problems. “They seem to be ignoring it.”
Features Coming Later
Andeer believes the DMA is misplaced within the Directorate-General for Competition. In his opinion, they only see everything from that perspective. Further points of criticism from Apple's chief regulator concern alternative app stores, where he sees problems with pornography and gambling, and the fact that the DMA allegedly hinders innovation.
Apple cited features such as the AirPods translation function, which had to be released later due to the necessary assurance of security standards for other systems. Apple also believes that it has to share its innovations “as the only one of all competitors.” (However, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have also been designated as “gatekeepers” by the EU.) “Any company with common sense would think twice about not doing that.”
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