EU Adopts New ‘Interoperability’ Requirements for Apple Under DMA

The European Commission, today:

Today, the European Commission adopted two decisions under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) specifying the measures that Apple has to take to comply with certain aspects of its interoperability obligation. [...]

The first set of measures concerns nine iOS connectivity features, predominantly used for connected devices such as smartwatches, headphones or TVs. The measures will grant device manufacturers and app developers improved access to iPhone features that interact with such devices (e.g. displaying notifications on smartwatches), faster data transfers (e.g. peer-to-peer Wi-Fi connections, and near-field communication) and easier device set-up (e.g. pairing).

Benjamin Mayo, reporting for 9to5Mac:

In a statement to 9to5Mac, Apple firmly rebuked the EU decision announced today about specific interoperability requirements the company must implement over the coming months.

Apple said “Today’s decisions wrap us in red tape, slowing down Apple’s ability to innovate for users in Europe and forcing us to give away our new features for free to companies who don’t have to play by the same rules. It’s bad for our products and for our European users. We will continue to work with the European Commission to help them understand our concerns on behalf of our users”.

In regards to customer privacy, Apple is especially concerned with the requirements surrounding opening up access to the iOS notification system. The company indicated these measures would allow companies to suck up all user notifications in an unencrypted form to their servers, sidestepping all privacy protections Apple typically enforces.

My interpretation of the adopted decision is that the EU is requiring Apple to treat iOS like a PC operating system, like MacOS or Windows, where users can install third-party software that runs, unfettered, in the background.

Apple’s statement makes clear their staunch opposition to these decisions. But at least at a superficial level, the European Commission’s tenor has changed. The quotes from the Commission executives (Teresa Ribera, who replaced firebrand Margrethe Vestager as competition chief, and Henna Virkkunen) are anodyne. Nothing of the vituperativeness of the quotes from Vestager and Thierry Breton in years past. But the decisions themselves make clear that the EU isn’t backing down from its general position of seeing itself as the rightful decision-maker for how iOS should function and be engineered, and that Apple’s core competitive asset — making devices that work better together than those from other companies — isn’t legal under the DMA.

★ Wednesday, 19 March 2025