Pros & cons: Should Apple be more strictly regulated?
With the Digital Markets Act, the EU is forcing Apple to open up the iPhone, for example with app stores and browsers. Does this go far enough?
For the first time, regulators have forced Apple to make fundamental changes to an operating system: In the EU, the manufacturer must now allow other app stores onto the iPhone and support web sideloading - and that's just the beginning. However, Apple is putting the brakes on implementation and the new rules do not apply outside the EU. Should regulators now take even tougher action?
PRO
For a long time, Apple was able to rest on the fact that its own services faced hardly any competition due to technical and business restrictions. We users have not gained from this: Apple's commission on in-app purchases and the rules knitted around them led to more confusing (no links to the provider's website allowed) and more expensive apps (Apple's commission is passed on to customers). This completely blocks some business models and app categories.
Yet Apple in particular owes a great deal to open operating systems: if Microsoft had demanded a 30 percent commission in Windows, as Apple does on the iPhone, the iPod and iTunes Store would hardly have taken off like it did over 20 years ago - and Apple's company history would have been very different. The "walled garden" made sense in the early days of the iPhone, but clear rules should apply to a platform that has become an integral part of everyday life with an audience of billions - rules that are not simply set by the manufacturer itself.
As Apple was not willing to open up iOS under its own control, the regulators are now doing this and there may well be undesirable side effects. However, this is no reason to do without regulation, but rather to design it as proactively as possible and make improvements where necessary. And there are also very welcome side effects: Apple is now allowing game emulators into the App Store after blocking them for a good fifteen years. However, instead of opening up globally, Apple is making it unnecessarily inconvenient for EU users (seeFAQ on iPhone sideloading and app marketplaces: Opportunities, risks and problems). The company's rigid sideloading requirements also go far beyond the declared aim of protecting users. Here, too, the EU & Co must intervene urgently and forcefully. (lbe)
CONTRA
Nobody is forced to buy an iPhone, an iPad or a Mac. There are hundreds of alternatives for smartphones, tablets and computers. And people use them too: Apple is not the market leader, instead it is Google with Android for smartphones and Microsoft with Windows for PCs - and clearly so in each case. The EU Commission knows this too. Nevertheless, it has decided to declare the iPhone manufacturer a so-called gatekeeper - most recently even for the iPad - and thus subject it to strict regulation. This can be seen as a good thing, because Apple definitely has market power.
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But what initially sounds reasonable can have many disadvantages for customers. A platform that the manufacturer previously had a vested interest in keeping clean and secure because it controlled the software, hardware and services - Apple's business model par excellence - could falter in the Union. Of course, Apple's review obligation for the App Store is annoying and sometimes misses the mark. But the platform itself works. The much-criticized 30 percent commission that Apple charges was an innovation when it was launched. Back then, people paid significantly more for software sales on other platforms. Of course, the company should have reduced it by now. That was a strategic mistake.
I fear that the EU is slowing down innovation with its approach. Does Apple now have to present every new feature in Brussels? Do bureaucrats really know about technology? Incidentally, it is not the small companies that have benefited from the hammer-and-tongs approach so far - well-intentioned, badly done - but other large corporations. The gaming giant Epic Games, for example, which wants just three percent less commission in its own app store than Apple for sales of less than one million a year. (bsc)
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