According to Financial Times reports, Microsoft and Apple have recently raised objections to the European Union, arguing that their communication services have not reached the threshold and should not be included in the “gatekeeper” regulation.
In July this year that EU industry director Thierry Breton announced that seven companies, including Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft, were included in the scope of the new “gatekeeper” regulations, which means that the above companies must meet Tougher rules.
According to the “Digital Market Law” (DMA) that came into effect in November, companies with more than 45 million monthly active users, a market value of 75 billion euros or an annual turnover of more than 7.5 billion euros Considered as the gatekeeper for providing core platform services.
Companies classified as “gatekeepers” require their messaging apps to interoperate with competitors and let users decide which apps are preinstalled on their devices.
“Europe is radically restructuring its digital space to both better protect EU citizens and enhance innovation among EU startups and companies,” Breton said in a statement.
Apple certainly meets the requirements of the new EU regulations in terms of annual turnover and company market value. However, the real controversial issue is whether iMessage has more than 45 million users in Europe.
Apple doesn’t publicly release monthly active user numbers for iMessage, so we can’t be sure how many users it has in each region.
Assuming iMessage is not included in the “gatekeeper” list announced this week, the European Commission may launch a follow-up investigation to force Apple to disclose relevant user metrics. All provisions of the Digital Marketplace Act will come into force in the spring 2024.
