Apple’s iPad Hit by EU’s Digital Dominance Crackdown

Samuel Stolton, Bloomberg News

Apple iPads. , Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- Apple Inc.’s iPad has been added to a list of Big Tech products and services hit by strict new European Union rules aimed at stopping potential competition abuses before they take hold.

The move means Apple has six months to make sure its tablet ecosystem complies with a raft of preemptive measures under the EU’s flagship Digital Markets Act.

The company’s iOS mobile operating system, its App Store and Safari browser are already targeted by the law — but Apple has challenged its designation for certain services to the EU’s General Court in Luxembourg, with hearings set to take place later this year.

The EU’s decision to draw iPad under the scope of the DMA will ensure that fairness and competition are preserved, EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager said in a statement. She said that despite not meeting all the thresholds for being earmarked, an investigation showed that “iPadOS constitutes an important gateway on which many companies rely to reach their customers.”

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The decision is a loss for Cupertino, California-based Apple, which will have to adapt its operating system to meet a swathe of new obligations and prohibitions, including allowing iPad users to download apps from beyond Apple’s confines as well as being able to uninstall apps preloaded onto devices.

An Apple spokesperson said that the company remains focused on delivering for European consumers, “while mitigating the new privacy and data security risks the DMA poses.”

The EU’s DMA strikes at the heart of the business models of six of the world’s most powerful technology firms deemed to be digital “gatekeepers.” Aside from Apple, Microsoft Corp., Meta Platforms Inc., Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Amazon.com Inc. and TikTok owner ByteDance Ltd. have all been targeted for new obligations aimed at preventing them from abusing their dominance.

Under the law — which came into full effect on March 7 — it is illegal for designated firms to favor their own services over those of rivals. They are also barred from combining personal data across their different services, prohibited from using data they collect from third-party merchants to compete against them, and have to allow users to download apps from rivals platforms.

(Updates to background throughout and comments from EU and Apple in paragraphs four and six.)