Apple Blames Digital Markets Act for Feature Delays in the EU

Apple really isn’t happy with the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), and it’s urging the European Commission to change the regulation to stop penalizing users of its products in Europe. In a long statement published on its website yesterday, the company also accused the EU Commission’s fluctuating interpretation of the DMA rules of making it “nearly impossible” for companies like Apple to know how to comply.

The DMA is a new EU regulation forcing “gatekeepers,” which are companies owning large online platforms like Apple, Microsoft, and Meta, to make changes to their products to better support competition. For Apple, this mostly meant allowing alternative app stores, payment systems, and browser engines on iOS in the EU, and this happened back in March 2024 with the release of iOS 17.4.

The DMA also requires Apple to make some features work on non-Apple products and apps. These new requirements have led Apple to delay the availability of iPhone Mirroring on macOS and the new Live Translation feature on AirPods, as that will require unexpected engineering work.

Speaking of iPhone Mirroring, Apple said that “Our teams still have not found a secure way to bring this feature to non-Apple devices without putting all the data on a user’s iPhone at risk.” Regarding the new Live Translation feature on AirPods, Apple explained that translations are processed on iPhones that support Apple Intelligence and are never accessible to Apple. “Our teams are doing additional engineering work to make sure they won’t be exposed to other companies or developers either,” the company said.

“We want our users in Europe to enjoy the same innovations at the same time as everyone else, and we’re fighting to make that possible — even when the DMA slows us down. But the DMA means the list of delayed features in the EU will probably get longer. And our EU users’ experience on Apple products will fall further behind,” Apple emphasized in the letter.

This had to be expected, but Apple also doesn’t see the availability of alternative app stores for iOS users in the EU as a positive change. The company claims this is “creating more complexity and more risks for our EU users,” even though the more open nature of macOS hasn’t really exposed Mac users to more threats when downloading apps and making payments.

Apple is also opposed to another aspect of the DMA, which allows other companies to request access to data from users’ iPhones, including notifications and the full history of joined Wi-Fi networks. “Large companies continue to submit new requests to collect even more data — putting our EU users at much higher risk of surveillance and tracking. Our teams have explained these risks to the European Commission, but so far, they haven’t accepted privacy and security concerns as valid reasons to turn a request down,” the company said.

Lastly, Apple argued that the complexity of the DMA and how the European Commission interprets its rules is “making it harder to do business in Europe.” The company also complained about the risks of being fined if it brought new features like iPhone Mirroring to EU users before making them first compatible with other companies’ products.

“When there are disagreements about the DMA’s requirements, companies have to make the European Commission’s changes before the courts weigh in — which can takes months or years — even if that does irreversible harm to users. And the penalties for failing to comply are totally arbitrary. They’re applied unevenly, and they’re designed to punish companies instead of promoting competition.”

All in all, Apple claimed that the DMA is penalizing users of its products in the EU, and it’s also failing to promote competition by forcing the company to make its technologies available for non-Apple products. “Instead of competing by innovating, already successful companies are twisting the law to suit their own agendas — to collect more data from EU citizens, or to get Apple’s technology for free,” Apple argued.