Apple

App stores, Apple, Designation Decision, Digital, Digital competition, Digital economy, Digital markets, Digital Markets Act, European Commission

(University Carlos III of Madrid, Spain)/ /Leave a comment

The Digital Markets Act (DMA) became entirely applicable on 7 March 2024. By then, the gatekeepers issued their compliance reports documenting their technical solutions and implementation of the DMA’s provisions under Article 11 DMA as well as their reports on consumer profiling techniques as required under Article 15 DMA (see here). During the following week,…

App stores, Apple, Digital competition, Digital economy, Digital markets, Digital Markets Act, European Commission, Fines, Proportionality, Unfair trading practices

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After almost three years since the Commission sent Apple its statement of objections, which was significantly trimmed down, the Commission reached a finding of abuse for which it imposed a whopping fine of 1.8 billion euros. Alongside this case, Apple was also involved in an almost identical case running parallel in the Netherlands, with similar…

Apple, Competition law, State aid

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On November 9th 2023, the Advocate General (“AG”) Pitruzzella published his Opinion on the Apple state aid case. More specifically, in Commission v Ireland & Apple (Case C‑465/20 P), the AG proposed to the European Court of Justice (“ECJ”) that it annul the General Court’s (“GC”) ruling in the Apple case, refer the cases back…

Amazon, App stores, Apple, Apps, Digital competition, Digital economy, Digital markets, Digital Markets Act, Europe, European Commission, Ex ante regulation, Facebook, Google

(University Carlos III of Madrid, Spain)/ /Leave a comment

The Digital Markets Act (DMA) is now applicable. Following the 6-month interim period where gatekeepers had the opportunity to adapt their business models to the regulation, the DMA now requires them to prove their effective compliance with its provisions. To do that, on 7 March 2024, the six designated gatekeepers in September (see here) presented…

Apple, Commitments, Competition, Digital Markets Act, European Commission

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On 9 January 2024, Apple offered several commitments under Article 9 Regulation 1/2003 to address the competition concerns of the European Commission in the markets for mobile wallets on iOS, inter alia to ensure effective interoperability with the Near Field Communication (NFC) functionality on iOS. This post will give an initial overview of Apple’s proposed…

Apple, Digital, Digital competition, Digital economy, Digital markets, Digital Markets Act

(University Carlos III of Madrid, Spain)/ /Leave a comment

As the deadline for compliance with the provisions of the Digital Markets Act is fast approaching, the designated gatekeepers are progressively proposing and implementing changes to their business models (for an extensive analysis of the designated CPSs see here and here). Apple’s recent announcement proposes to implement changes on its operating system (iOS), web browser…

Abuse of dominance, Apple, Digital competition, Digital economy, Digital markets, Digital Markets Act, General Court of the European Union

(University Carlos III of Madrid, Spain)/ /Leave a comment

Next 16 November 2023, the deadline for the designated gatekeepers on the 5th of September 2023 to appeal the Commission’s decisions will come to an end (for a review of the decisions, see here). Up until this moment, reporting has only documented that Apple would be considering challenging the Commission’s decisions and is prone to…

Abuse of dominance, App stores, Apple, National competition authorities (NCAs), National court, Netherlands

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The Dutch case concerning the Apple App Store appears to make a (welcome) comeback. The case that started in 2019 came to a rather disappointing end in the summer of 2022 when the Dutch competition authority issued a public statement that gave the impression that it was satisfied with Apple’s adjustments to the App Store…

Apple, Apps, National competition authorities (NCAs), National court, Netherlands

(Bird & Bird, Netherlands) and (Bird & Bird)/ /Leave a comment

On 2 October 2023, the Dutch competition authority ACM published its decision on the objections filed by Apple on 13 July 2023 (decision on objection) against the ACM’s decision of 24 August 2021 imposing an order subject to periodic penalty payments on Apple for infringing the abuse of dominance provision laid down in Article 24…

Abuse of dominance, Advantage, Advertising, App stores, Apple, Digital economy, Digital markets, Digital Markets Act, Digital Services Act, European Commission, European Union, Ex ante regulation, Facebook

(University Carlos III of Madrid, Spain)/ /Leave a comment

The wheels of the DMA have started turning and so have the International Law Talk episodes. I had the pleasure to interview Assimakis Komninos following the Commission’s press release establishing the economic operators that it had designated as gatekeepers under the DMA. This triggering event gave us the excuse to talk about a range of…