To ensure better competition, the European Commission has added the iPad operating system to its list of OS affected by the DMA.
The European Commission announced on Monday that Apple’s tablet operating system, iPadOS, would be subject to new, stricter competition rules under the Digital Markets Regulation (DMA).
These rules have applied since the beginning of March to certain key services of five American giants of the sector – Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft – and the Chinese ByteDance, owner of TikTok, in order to stop abuse of a dominant position.
The iPad not exempt from the DMA
Within the Apple group, the iOS smartphone operating system, the Safari browser and the AppStore application store had already been designated among the services subject to the new regulation which intends to profoundly modify the practices of the digital behemoths.
Apple now has six months to ensure that its iPadOS is fully compliant with the DMA rules. The regulation sets out a series of tailor-made obligations and prohibitions to curb the type of unfair actions that have resulted in foreclosing or restricting competition. Among many examples, Google is now prohibited from exploiting the quasi-monopoly of its search engine to better reference its own services, such as the Google Shopping price comparison.
Apple must open its iPhones to application stores other than its App Store and to payment systems competing with Apple Pay.
The DMA provides for fines of up to 10% of the global turnover of the group concerned and 20% in the event of repeat offenses.
